Crumpets

Whisk the flour, yeast, sugar and fine salt together in a large bowl.

Pour in the warm milk and the 150ml of lukewarm water.

Beat hard with a wooden spoon for a full minute, until the batter is completely smooth and pulls in strands off the spoon.

Beat it properly. There is nothing here to knead, so that minute is the only gluten development the batter ever gets, and an under-beaten one cannot hold the bubbles that make the holes.

Cover and prove at room temperature for 60-90 minutes, until the surface is domed, covered in bubbles and smells strongly of yeast.

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the 50ml of warm water.

Stir it through the batter, which will foam up and drop back.

Rest the batter for 15 minutes.

Check the consistency: it should fall off the spoon in a thick slow ribbon. Too stiff and the bubbles cannot break the surface, too loose and it runs out under the rings.

Correct it with a spoonful of water or a spoonful of flour if it sits either side of that.

Oil the inside of the rings and the surface of a heavy frying pan or flat griddle.

Set the rings in the pan and heat it over low heat for 3-4 minutes.

Keep the heat genuinely low. A hot griddle sets the base and the sides before the bubbles have worked their way up, and you get a scorched bottom, a doughy middle and no holes at all.

Pour about 70ml of batter into each ring, filling it about 1.5cm deep.

Cook for 8-10 minutes, until holes have opened across the whole surface and stayed open, the shine has gone and the top is dry to a fingertip.

Lift the rings off with tongs, running a knife around the inside of any that stick.

Turn the crumpets over.

Cook for 2-3 minutes only, until the second face is barely coloured.

Leave that side pale. It is not the eating surface — a crumpet is browned in the toaster later, and one cooked brown on both sides now is dry by the time it gets there.

Cool them on a rack.

Cook the rest of the batter the same way, oiling the rings again each time.

Toast both sides before eating and butter the holed face heavily while it is hot, so the butter runs down into the holes.

Keep them in a bag for three days, or freeze them and toast from frozen.