Crumpet troubleshooting

[Clutterista]

Bought egg rings (cos when 4 eggs stick together in one pan and then white isn't 'fairly' distributed the moaning is epic), so decided to try crumpets. Cos why not.

Used the recipe on the back of the egg ring packet. Rose ok, looked nice and bubbly but:

• despite cooking for longer, the inside was quite doughy, and not in a good way
• for a max of 5 hols on top and that, frankly, isn't sufficient to rise the half lb of butter DP likes to slather his in.

They also tasted like the flour hadn't quite... cooked out, iykwim.

Any ideas of a) great recipes and b) improvements in technique? It's quite a lot of effort to go to for mediocre results!

Please & thank you

I’ve got this from about 1980. It’s Australian so the flour is probably harder. Did you just use ordinary flour? Good bread flour might be worth a try. Adding extra gluten to cake flour if that’s what is available might do the trick.

If you didn't have many holes then the batter was too thick. It needs to be runny like pancake batter. You can make a massive crumpet in a small frying pan and then cut it into four when it comes out, I've made four batches during lockdown and that was the easiest way of cooking them.

This makes a lot but I freeze them

450g plain flour (not bread flour)
350ml milk (warm)
350ml water (warm)
5g powdered yeast

mix to make a batter, cover and leave 1-4 hours. Heat griddle, oil egg rings. Whisk 10g salt and 1 teaspoon baking powder into the batter. Cook 5 m on one side, 3m on the second side.

If they are dark brown then the pan is too hot, if the top isn't nearly dry by 5 minutes then either the pan is not hot or you have really deep egg rings. They do rise a lot in the pan. I cool them on a wire tray and freeze them.

They taste the same even though they have a corner once cut.

Image fail, imagine a very large crumpet

Thanks all, yes did use bread flour as directed. Hmm, batter was quite thick but having not done it before, assumed that was normal. Will try again :-)