Gluten Free Sourdough Crumpets (English Muffins)

Here's a video of the process of making these crumpets!

I've been on a gluten free sourdough baking adventure lately, inspired by Aran Goyoaga's wonderful new book "The Art of Gluten Free Baking"

This recipe is very close to the crumpet recipe in Aran's book, but I've modified it to work with my flours.

If you're into gluten free baking, I highly recommend this book as well as her previous two! I'm working on carrying her books in the farm store, as well as more gluten free baking ingredients so stay tuned. The flours I use are linked below.

These crumpets are essentially english muffins, and they're excellent toasted and spread with butter and jam. If you're local, you can find the rings to cook the batter in at Vidler's in East Aurora.

These freeze well, so you may want to consider doubling or tripling the batch so you have them on hand for breakfasts. Plan to make the batter the night before so the batter can rest and ferment overnight, before cooking in the morning.

Yield: 4-5 crumpets, depending on ring size

Ingredients:

-40 grams of finely ground brown rice flour

-40 grams teff flour OR sorghum flour

-30 grams tapioca starch

-8 grams finely ground flax seed

-5 grams sugar

-4 grams sea salt

-150 grams milk

-150 grams sourdough starter (mine is a simple brown rice flour + water starter, see note below)

-1/2 teaspoon baking soda (reserve until the morning you plan to cook the crumpets)

Method:

In the evening, the night before you want to make the crumpets, whisk all ingredients in a medium size mixing bowl until you have a smooth batter (leave out the baking soda).

Cover the bowl with a dish towel and leave it at room temperature overnight.

In the morning, preheat a cast iron skillet over low heat for at least 5 minutes, so the heat is evenly distributed in the pan.

Grease the inside of your rings with a generous amount of olive oil, then place the rings in the cast iron skillet and drizzle a tablespoon of oil into the pan and use the rings to move the oil around. I use four rings for the amount of batter this recipe yields, because I like them quite full, but you could divide the batter into 5 rings depending on your desired crumpet size.

Add the 1/2 teaspoon baking soda to the fermented crumpet batter and whisk in well. Don't worry about deflating the batter, it works a bit differently than a typical bread dough.

Fill each ring about 3/4 full of batter. Refrain from adding more batter, as the crumpets will rise and expand as they cook.

Cook for approximately 5 minutes on low or medium/low heat, until you see some bubbles start to form at the top of the crumpet batter. Using a spatula, flip each crumpet over and continue cooking for another 5 or so minutes, until both sides of the crumpet are golden brown.

Remove the crumpets from the heat and place on a wire rack to cool slightly, then remove the rings carefully from each crumpet. You may need a thin knife to assist in remove the rings, depending on how well you greased the rings and the texture of your batter.

Carefully split open the crumpet using your fingers or a fork, toast, and serve with good butter and jam.

Starter notes: to make a gluten free sourdough starter, I simply combined 50 grams water with 50 grams finely ground brown rice flour. I then fed the starter morning and night at the same 1:1 ratio over the course of 5 days, at which point the starter was pleasantly sour smelling and visibly active after feeding.

The sourdough discard can be saved in the fridge for future gluten free baking, so there is no waste. Aran's book delves much deeper into this topic, but this can get you started!