Sourdough Crumpets Recipe – A Sourdough Discard Recipe (2024)

This sourdough crumpets recipe puts your sourdough starter discard to use, so that it doesn’t go to waste, to make authentic English crumpets. They’re absolutely delicious with lashings of butter and dollops of homemade jam. They don’t take long to make, so like the sourdough scallion pancakes they’ll inspire you to try more sourdough starter discard recipes.

This sourdough crumpets recipe is a fun follow-up to our sourdough scallion pancakes recipe if, like so many of us around the world, while you’ve been staying at home quarantine cooking and working your way through a list of cooking projects, you’ve been trying out some sourdough starter discard recipes to use the excess you remove when you feed your starter.

Now if you haven’t begun your sourdough journey yet and are in two minds as to whether you want to commit, see Terence’s simple sourdough starter recipe, his beginner’s guide to easy sourdough baking and his post on how deeply satisfying he finds sourdough baking, a response to the recent sourdough backlash.

If you have been making sourdough and have been getting frustrated by wasting sourdough starter, then do check out my post on starter discard recipes (link above), and try our sourdough crumpets recipe below.

Sourdough Crumpets Recipe – Another Idea for Your Sourdough Starter Discard

I have to confess that I miss things like English crumpets and muffins. Here in Cambodia we mainly eat eggs for breakfast at home and when we head out we’re tucking into a plate of grilled pork and rice or slurping nom banh chok for breakfast in Siem Reap. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, it will be breakfast noodles, such as ohn no khao swe in Yangon, Lao khao soi in Luang Prabang, soto ayam in Yogyakarta, and khanom jeen in phu*ket Town. I adore breakfasts in Southeast Asia, but sometimes we need a change.

And I adored crumpets as a kid. Mid-week school-morning breakfasts growing up in Australia consisted of cereal, muesli or toast and Vegemite or jam in the warmer spring-summer months. But during the cooler autumn and winter seasons it was a bowl of porridge or English muffins or crumpets. Breakfast eggs were mainly enjoyed as a family on weekends and holidays.

I’d hate to have to pick a favourite if asked to choose between an English muffin and crumpet. I love the way the butter melts right through them both and they’re both solid enough to serve as a vehicle for a generous dollop of jam in the way that toast can’t handle.

If hard pressed, I’d have to pick English crumpets for their firm yet soft bottoms, textured interiors and holey tops – which is why we had to have a go at a sourdough crumpets recipe next. Especially as some of my sourdough starter scallion pancakes had a texture that was very close to that of a crumpet.

Note that I’ve reverted to the ‘we’ and that’s because my first attempts at a sourdough crumpets recipe failed dismally. So naturally I sought the assistance of Terence, who is a far more experienced sourdough baker than I am.

The first sourdough starter discard crumpets recipe I tested resulted in something more closely resembling a sourdough muffin – there were no holes and the texture was like a very dense bread, despite me following the ingredient amounts and instructions to the letter.

The second sourdough discard crumpets recipe I tried produced something more akin to a sourdough pancake, while the third crumpet recipe resulted in a sort of Indian-style flat-bread. All of which would have been absolutely fantastic had I been attempting those recipes!

Terence to the rescue and his helpful notes and sourdough crumpets recipe below.

Tips to Making Sourdough Crumpets with Sourdough Starter Discard

For this sourdough crumpets recipe to be a success (i.e. so they actually resemble English crumpets and not English muffins, pancakes or Indian flatbreads), I found it best making two sourdough crumpets at a time, so I divided Lara’s sourdough starter discard mixture in half.

The reason for doing this is because the mixture will sink back down into the pouring jar in the eight minutes between batches. The puffier the mix becomes the better the crumpets will rise and the more they will stay aerated and create the holes and texture that you want. It’s actually quite a magical process to watch.

While you really don’t need any special tools to make this sourdough crumpets recipe, you shouldn’t substitute silicon egg rings for the metal pastry rings as they’re generally not tall enough to hold a decent crumpet, and I highly recommend using a ‘fish slice’, a thin metal slotted spatula. It really is the best way to turn the crumpet over as it easily slides right under the crumpet.

When it comes to cooking the second side, note that this will be the top of the crumpet. You want a nice light golden brown on this side (the other side will be darker) so watch it closely as is colours and don’t let it get too toasty. Plan to make these so that they can be eaten straight away as they’re much more delicious straight from the pan, although they refrigerated just fine and we had some toasted the next day.

Sourdough Crumpets Recipe

Do let us know if you try this sourdough crumpets recipe in the comments below. We’d love to know how it turned out for you. And please do tag us on @grantourismo if you share your crumpets to Instagram.

A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.