Crumpets
2 cups scalded milk 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons melted butter 1/2 yeast cake 3 cups Gold Medal flour Put in mixing bowl sugar, salt and butter, add scalded milk. When lukewarm add the yeast cake. When yeast is thoroughly dissolved add the flour slowly, beating constantly. Let the sponge stand in a warm place from two to four hours or until light. Bake in greased muffin rings on a hot griddle or in patty pans in the oven. In either case fill the pans only half full. BISCUIT, SHORTCAKE, MUFFINS, ETC. WITH BAKING POWDER
This is a pourable yeast batter, not a dough — three cups of flour to two cups of milk gives something closer to thick pancake batter. Everything else follows from that.
- The hinge: keep the batter slackIf you add flour until it stiffens, you get a muffin rather than a crumpet. Beat it to the consistency of heavy pancake batter, and after the long rise stir it down just enough to pour.
- Half a yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of the period were commonly around 0.6 oz, though sizes varied, so this is roughly 0.3 oz of fresh yeast — on the order of a teaspoon of active dry, or a little less instant. Given the two-to-four-hour rise, err on the low side in a warm kitchen.
- Scalding the milkScalding is usually explained as dealing with something in raw milk that weakens gluten, and before pasteurisation it also killed bacteria; with modern milk it is generally held unnecessary. Heat the milk only enough to melt the butter, then let it fall to about 110F before the yeast goes in — the recipe itself asks only for lukewarm.
- Muffin ringsThese are plain metal rings about 3 to 3 1/2 inches across and 3/4 inch deep — crumpet rings sold today are the same thing. Grease the rings as well as the griddle or the batter will weld to the sides.
- Griddle heat and timingThe recipe says a hot griddle, but in practice medium heat works better, roughly 325 to 350F on an electric griddle. Cook 8 to 10 minutes in the ring until the top is set and dry and the holes have opened, then lift the ring and give the top face under a minute — crumpets are barely browned on the second side.
- The oven option"Patty pans" are small shallow individual tins, close to a muffin tin. The book gives no temperature; a moderately hot oven of about 375 to 400F for something like 15 to 25 minutes is a reasonable guess. These come out softer and without the open holed top.
- Half fullThe instruction is not decorative. This batter more than doubles in the ring or tin, and overfilled rings overflow and stick.
- YieldPerhaps a dozen or more crumpets from 3-inch rings, depending on the depth of the rings. They are meant to be cooled, then toasted and buttered rather than eaten straight off the griddle.
- The trailing line"BISCUIT, SHORTCAKE, MUFFINS, ETC. WITH BAKING POWDER" is the heading of the next section in the book, not part of this recipe.
History: Crumpets are English, and the name is generally traced to older words for a thin curled cake — Welsh crempog is often cited as a relative. By the nineteenth century they had settled into their present form: a yeast-raised batter cooked in rings on a bakestone, sold by muffin men and toasted at the fire. The reference to Gold Medal flour points to a Washburn-Crosby promotional cookbook. Flour-mill cookbooks of this kind were given away to sell a brand of flour, and they cast a wide net — griddle breads, English tea breads, and quick breads all in one chapter. The trailing heading suggests this recipe sits near the end of the yeast-bread section, immediately before the baking powder recipes.