Muffins, Crumpets and Pikelets

There's a lot of confusion in the world over the naming of foods. Take muffins for example, in the UK these are griddled and toasted bready buns, in the US it's often hard to distinguish them from cupcakes.

I'm in France but I was brought up in a very English environment and I find that the culinary culture of my youth becomes increasingly important to me as the boundaries of available cuisines are nullified by the overwhelming and all pervading influence of the internet.

So I'm going to try to set the record straight for British breads today and define muffins, crumpets and pikelets as they are traditionally understood in Britain. They haven't had a particularly good press over the years, often being likened to greasy cardboard or soggy blankets. Although they may give the jaws a workout they are still a comforting filling food and anyone brought up them remembers them with affection.

All three are similar in that they are cooked on a griddle, a flat cooking surface often made from cast iron and heated from below. This is sometimes spelled as girdle which can be confusing in itself. The facility of having an oven in every kitchen is really quite a recent thing. Cooking over an open fire or on the hot plate of a simple stove is a very old practice, like these breads.

These ancient bread forms make use of traditional local ingredients, the sort of grains that are easily grown in the British climate. Hard bread wheat does not do so well in our moist temperate climes so most ancient flours were made with lower protein wheats and other grains.

The other similarity they all have to each other is that it was traditional to mix the dough and leave it overnight before cooking the next morning. These are the original no-knead breads, time savers for busy housewives with many mouths to feed. It is unusual to enrich the doughs with extras like butter or eggs but I have seen recipes with both. For the richer families perhaps.

Muffins have the stiffest mixture of the three, firm enough to hold its own shape after rising. A bread dough is made up, lightly kneaded and set to rise overnight. In the morning it is knocked back, shaped into flat buns and cooked gently over a very lightly greased griddle. The buns are later toasted (presumably to freshen them) then split in half and served butter and sometimes preserves.

Crumpets are a much wetter mixture and in order to form their shape on the griddle special crumpet rings are needed. Again, the batter is mixed, left overnight, refreshed in the morning and then cooked on the griddle until the bottoms are browned and the tops pocked with holes where the bubbles in the dough have burst. They are then turned over for a few moments to seal the tops. These also require toasting before eating, fun to do with an old fashioned toasting fork in front of a roaring fire on an autumn afternoon. Their firm texture means they don't fall off the fork as easily as bread does.

I wanted to make crumpets today but had no rings and so after wondering about creating some from old bean cans eventually decided to give them a miss.

Pikelets seem to have become confused in their identification even the UK. I've seen several recipes for baking powder leavened versions which are almost the same as recipes for drop scones or American Pancakes but in my mind a proper pikelet is a thin crumpet. It has to be thin because without a ring there is nothing to hold the mixture high while it cooks. They are small cakes made with a meagre batter and use a little less fuel while cooking. The home made bread of the very poor.



Pikelets

250g plain flour (a fine wholemeal will work, I used a mixture)
200ml water
2g dried powdered yeast (2g granular yeast, reconstituted in a little of the water, 5g fresh)
pinch of salt.

Put everything into a big bowl (the mixture is going to rise) that can be covered and mix well together with a wooden spoon. Beat the mixture until your arm gets tired, then cover and leave at room temperature until the next day.

At this point you can add a little bicarbonate of soda if you want big bubbles. Beat the mixture again and drop small (dessert) spoons of the dough onto a lightly greased hot griddle. Spread them out a little to get nice round shapes, not too thin but equal thickness all over. Allow to cook over a gentle heat for five minutes or so until the tops have dried and the bubbles popped. Turn over and cook for a further couple of minutes.

Remove from the heat and wrap in a clean tea towel while you cook the rest of the batch.

Before serving toast lightly on both sides, butter well with vegan spread and serve for tea with jam if liked. I had some for breakfast with Marmite but maybe that's taking cultural preferences a step too far for most!