SOURDOUGH CRUMPETS

Making the Crumpets

• Heat a frying pan to medium heat. 

• When the pan is up to temperature whisk the salt, sugar and bicarbonate of soda into your starter. 

• Drop some of the batter into the pan, as you would with a small pancake. If you have crumpet rings you can use these otherwise you can make free form crumpets. Cook for a few minutes until the top of the crumpet looks cooked. Then flip over and cook for around another minute. 

• Then you can either eat them straight away or save them for toasting later. 

Making the sourdough starter:

Day 1: 

1. 1 tsp strong white flour 

2. 1 tsp water 

Mix together the flour and the water in a container with a lid (it does not need to be airtight). We actually recommend mixing with your hands rather than a spoon. As disgusting as it might sound all humans have naturally occurring yeast on their hands and so using your hands to mix the levain can give it a real boost. Leave  the mixture overnight at room temperature. 

Day 2: 

1. Day 1 mix 

2. 1 tsp strong white flour 

3. 1 tsp water 

Throw away half of the mixture from Day 1. This is because you want to almost overwhelm the bacteria/yeast in the starter with food which means you need to add more flour (food) than the weight of the original mixture. You could do this by adding more flour/water and not throw any away but you would very quickly end up with an excessively large amount of levain. 

Stir the flour and water into the remaining mix and leave at room temperature again. 

Days 3 & 4: 

Repeat Day 2 

Day 5: 

At this point you should notice your levain has bubbles in and has a slightly sour/acidic smell. This means that your levain is ready. At this point you can start making bread by adding the amount of flour necessary for your chosen recipe and leaving it overnight at room temperature. 

If your levain still seems inactive don’t worry just keep repeating Day 2 until it does. 

There are quite a few factors that can affect how long it takes a levain to get going, temperature being one of the main culprits. For example if you start your levain in winter when it is cold it may take longer to get going. Also, the general environment can affect that speed at which the levain becomes active. IN the bakery, as we are making bread everyday, there is so much yeast already in the atmosphere that we find levains can take just a couple of days to get going whereas if a kitchen is very sterile it is likely to take much longer.