When we go out and about, we sometimes find ourselves in a tearoom or similar. I've noticed recently that if you order a toasted product, such as crumpets, tea cakes or even toast, the items will always appear warm and raw. Never a hint of browning or indeed blackening about them. I'm sure it never used to be like this.
I like my toasty things actually toasted. Has the catering industry read the tabloid headlines and decided the merest speck of brown will kill their customers instantly before they get to the tills or something?
I even asked for extra toasting time on my crumpets yesterday. Nope. The crumpets had clearly been prepared by lighting a candle in the next room.
It's a burning question. Are you a warm raw person, or a blackened and crunchy person?
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Crumpets go in the toaster on 9 (max) and could really do with a bit longer; but the toaster isn't really hot and fast enough to get some proper charcoal on without drying them our.
As a student, I used to remove the wore guard from the gas fire in the digs as stick them on the radiant. Perfick.
I don't think I have ever ordered one in any sort of eating establishment, they are a home thing.
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Nice and crunchy for me, crumpets take a while in our toaster they need a good blasting to get nice and crunchy.
I await the inevitable comment, that someone hasn't eaten a piece of toast or a crumpet etc in 46 years. ;-)
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We cook our crumpets in a pannini grill type gadget, the come out with pretty brown stripes. :-)
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>> We cook our crumpets in a pannini grill type gadget, the come out with pretty
>> brown stripes. :-)
Or what we called the Breville sandwich toaster, more or less. Maybe I'll try it when ours comes out of the cupboard in the spring clean.
Any road, spurred by this thread, I have already improved my crumpet toasting. I've just had one.
Remembering that the the second batch of toast is always burnt unless I reduce the setting, I preheated the toaster this time, then put crumpet in at number 9.
Much better browning. Opened a new packet of that sea salted butter, and made a big mug of tea. Spot on.
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About to have crumpets. The open fire is doing its thing today. Just suggested we use it, but i'm told no, "the grill produces a more even crumpet."
Plus I may well have used the (telescopic) toasting fork to stir paint or something anyway.
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>>Opened a new packet of that sea salted butter, and made a big mug of tea. Spot on.
De auerdo. When I was a young goat it was always 2 sugars in my tea, and Stork on my (what we called) muffins.
I'd dunk said muffns in the sweetened tea. The flavour of said tea after the dunking was 7th heaven.
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Or hasn’t Had any Crumpet in 46 years!
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Crumpets are best done under a hot preheated grill rather than a toaster.
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>> Crumpets are best done under a hot preheated grill rather than a toaster.
Concur, tho a preheated cast iron griddle is also very good
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 17 Nov 17 at 20:41
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>> Crumpets are best done under a hot preheated grill rather than a toaster.
>>
But best of all on a toasting fork in front of an open fire.
There's an art to judging the precise degree of toasting by the sizzling noise, and withdrawing the fork while the crumpet is very hot and dark brown but not burnt.
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Crumpets need to be very crunchy on the bottom, crunchy on top, soft in the middle dripping with butter.
Teacakes need to be toasted medium to dark brown on top, buttered while hot.
Toast needs to be even light brown all over, thin smear of butter when they have cooled a little.
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I may be speaking heresy here with the taffs, but i like my welsh cakes toasted as well
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I wonder if it's a young person's thing. Nothing too cooked.
In another place there is a discussion about "things nobody in their right mind wants or uses in their house any more" and the lists being offered include things that to me seem quite ordinary.
Carpets. Tablecloths. French doors. Dining rooms.
Getting old, I think.
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I am sure Big Bad Dave will be along soon to tell us how he likes his crumpets.
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Horrible things. Never taken to them, especially the flaccid, pallid, putrid supermarket ones.
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Yep some of the check out assistants in Tesco are a bit rough.
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>>Are you a warm raw person, or a blackened and crunchy person?
Not blackened; well browned. Best done under the grill so the bottom, which is well-brown anyway, doesn't get burnt. Also, must be buttered, none of this 'ere spread malarkey.
Used to call 'em muffins when I was a young scallywag. The muffin man used to come round the streets with his barrow, and rang his bell, like the rag n' bone man did.
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When I was in digs toasting them on a gas fire, one of my co-lodgers was a Black Country lad.
"Them's poiklits, not crumpets, they is!" (or something like that)
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www.villagebakery.co.uk/blog/bakery-blog/pikelet-vs-crumpet-whats-the-difference/
One of the few items I have from my childhood is a telescopic toasting fork that well used when I toasted crumpets or bread by the fire or the range.
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Thanks Henry. We live and learn.
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>> "Them's poiklits, not crumpets, they is!" (or something like that)
My Gran, raised in Leeds's mining belt, called them pikelets.
Are muffins (as sold by the man from Drury Lane) the same thing as well?
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Gone off crumpets in recent years (though not crumpet!), I tried to avoid high glycemic white flour, I do like a slice of granary bread toasted tho ...
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MUffins to me were like large flatter buns of bread - we used to hollow them out and fill them with crisps. Lovely
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To me muffins are a sweet bread roll of a specific size and flatter shape. Quite nice split and toasted with a fried egg in the middle.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 18 Nov 17 at 09:40
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I'm more into bagels these days, 'specially sesame seed bagels, toasted and oozing with buddha.
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Two well toasted crumpets, drizzle a teaspoon of whisky on to each of them while hot, let it soak in for a moment and then butter. With real butter of course.
God they're good like that.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Sat 18 Nov 17 at 09:59
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>> Two well toasted crumpets, drizzle a teaspoon of whisky
Cumbrian Rum Butter is another good topping.
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>> To me muffins are a sweet bread roll of a specific size and flatter shape.
>> Quite nice split and toasted with a fried egg in the middle.
That's what I'd call a muffin today, as opposed to the American muffin which is a sweet bun. Remember a delicious brunch of haggis and egg muffin while cycling on Mull of Galloway a couple of years ago. Washed down with Irn Bru to complete the stereotype.
ISTR however that when I was a kid in the West Riding they were something more like a crumpet, but perhaps the memory is playing tricks.
Local variations on names for bread rolls or bread buns are a linguistic curiosity causing enduring confusion. A CA colleague used to manage a small store and was asked by a man with a strong northern accent if she stocked 'barm cakes*'. She spent a while searching the Mr Kipllings etc before he pointed out he wanted a bread product.....
*Northern, mainly Lancashire I think, term for a form of bread roll - or maybe a muffin.
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>> That's what I'd call a muffin today, as opposed to the American muffin which is
>> a sweet bun.
An American muffin is more or less a small cake, specially when it has fruit in it. They recognise the difference, calling the muffin as we know it, An English muffin.
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The scone.
Is it Scown or Skon.
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>>
>> Is it Scown or Skon.
>>
I've heard skon, scoan, or then there's the Palace of Scone pronounced skoon.
But scown ? That's a new one, who on earth says that?
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>> The scone.
>>
>>
>> Is it Scown or Skon.
Scone is a town pronounced Skoon.
Scone is a cake pronounced Skon.
There is no such thing as a cake pronounced sc-own. ( or scoan , thank you Cliff ) A purely English affectation or plain error.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Sat 18 Nov 17 at 10:41
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'Scone' rhymes with 'bone'.
What's so difficult about that?
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>> 'Scone' rhymes with 'bone'.
>>
>> What's so difficult about that?
Nothing, but surely it rhymes with Ron rather than bone.
And how about the nuts in marzipan
Do you pronounce them as olmonds or armonds?
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Neither, I pronounce it almonds, it doesn't start with o or have an r in it.
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"Nothing, but surely it rhymes with Ron rather than bone"
If the person who invented them wanted it to rhyme with 'Ron', he'd have spelled it 'scon'.
And those nuts are almonds not armunds or anything else.
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What's difficult about it is that rhyming scone with bone is just completely wrong. It rhymes with gone.
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Relatively local to you Runfer:
Shrewsbury (with Shrew as in 'taming of') or Shrowsbury
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Z probably meant scown pron. as in 'own', not 'town'. I agree with him. Scon? An affectation.
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>> Z probably meant scown pron. as in 'own', not 'town'. I agree with him. Scon?
>> An affectation.
On the contrary, "scoan" is the affectation, imported from American English actually. And we all know how they murder the mother tongue.
More here...simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scone
For a native Brit, pronouncing it "scoan" is nothing short of preposterous.
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>> On the contrary, "scoan" is the affectation, imported from American English actually. And we all
>> know how they murder the mother tongue.
I'm pretty sure I've seen explanations of the differences between American and British pronunciations the gist of which are that RP is the affectation, and American is much closer to what the Pilgrim Fathers took with them than modern, British English.
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Not a great deal of RP spoken in Scotland, and they say "Skon"
Which given that the damn things were invented there would seem to be fairly conclusive.
The other thing I abhor, is people saying "sheer" when they mean "shire" when pronouncing county names.
Ridiculous.
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>> The other thing I abhor, is people saying "sheer" when they mean "shire" when pronouncing
>> county names.
While I tend to agree it's not a new affectation. My parents had a record of Gracie Fields performing a comic song based on the northern expression 'ee by gum'. IIRC it includes the line 'In Lancasheer and Yorksheer ever since the world began'
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAJBIr1ZO4A
Actually more Lancashurrr but you get my point?
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>> The other thing I abhor, is people saying "sheer" when they mean "shire" when pronouncing
>> county names.
>>
>> Ridiculous.
>>
You what? Just been on holiday near Worcester. I've never heard anyone say "wooster-shire", other than perhaps an American or something.
It's "wooster-sheer", surely, along with Cambridgesheer etc. Who says "shire" unless reading Lord of the Rings out loud?
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You wouldn't refer to a "Sheer" horse would you?
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>> Not a great deal of RP spoken in Scotland, and they say "Skon"
>>
I thought that in Scotland it was pronounced "Bannock"
:-(
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That's a fruitcake, from Selkirk.
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>> I'm a fruitcake, from Selkirk.
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Aha ;-)
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Local variations on names for bread rolls or bread buns are a linguistic curiosity causing
>> enduring confusion.
I remember when I first started the OH her and her mum couldn't understand what type of bread products I was talking about and likewise for me. Particularly for tea cakes, current tea cakes/bread buns etc.
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>> I remember when I first started the OH her and her mum couldn't understand what
>> type of bread products I was talking about and likewise for me. Particularly for tea
>> cakes, current tea cakes/bread buns etc.
Tea cake - bread in flattish circular shape, enough for a decent sandwich (e.g a "ham tea cake", "cheese and onion tea cake", or one of my favourites a "Bovril and lettuce tea cake").
Currant tea cake - as above with fruit in it. For toasting and buttering.
That was in Brighouse where I grew up.
In Sheffield, 30 miles away, a tea cake is (or was) a bread cake, and (I think) what they call a tea cake has (or had) fruit in it. They probably eat bagels, muffins, rolls and baps now.
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>> They
>> probably eat bagels, muffins, rolls and baps now.
>>
Croissants in Sheffield these days ...
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>>
>> >> They
>> >> probably eat bagels, muffins, rolls and baps now.
>> >>
>>
>> Croissants in Sheffield these days ...
Brioche in Dore perhaps.
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>> Tea cake - bread in flattish circular shape, enough for a decent sandwich (e.g a
>> "ham tea cake", "cheese and onion tea cake", or one of my favourites a "Bovril
>> and lettuce tea cake").
>>
>> Currant tea cake - as above with fruit in it. For toasting and buttering.
Exactly how I would describe them as well.
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>> I remember when I first started the OH her and her mum couldn't understand what
>> type of bread products I was talking about and likewise for me.
Yes indeed, can be very wrong to ask for some nice big baps in certain places...
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Yes indeed, can be very wrong to ask for some nice big baps in certain
>> places...
>>
In fact that reminds of the exception to the rule, a breakfast bap. It was about triple the size of a normal teacake, with a full English breakfast in it.
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"My Gran, raised in Leeds's mining belt, called them pikelets."
In working-class Leicestershire, we had 'pikelets'. Muffins and crumpets were something that posh people had and, to be honest, I never have understood what they were. Having said that, I was in the 'Muffin the Mule' club, but that was something completely different.
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>>Muffins and crumpets were something that posh people had and, to be honest,
>> I never have understood what they were.
and of course one had tiffin .
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"and of course one had tiffin ."
I took it that 'tiffin' was another expression for 'afternoon tea'.
I remember 'Tiffin' as a Fry's chocolate bar that was included with 'Fry's Five Boys' and other delights in the 'Fry's Christmas Selection Box'. I preferred their chocolate to any other.
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>> I took it that 'tiffin' was another expression for 'afternoon tea'.
My first thought was that tiffin was 'elevenses'.
Quite intersting etymology as it happens:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffin
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One of our BBC North West TV presenters is called Annabelle Tiffin......Gorgeous !
Just saying.
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Toasty or raw - Manatee
