Claudia Romeo: Hello, today we're in Enfield in London
to find out how traditional crumpets are made.
And for those of you who don't know,
crumpets are a very British thing.
They are similar to toast,
similar to pancakes, similar to bread.
But they're neither bread, neither pancakes.
So, today, we are at Warburtons,
which is UK's largest crumpet producer.
Imagine, in Enfield alone they make 36,000 crumpets per hour.
British crumpets. So, what are they, exactly?
And how did they become so popular within British cuisine?
It is said that crumpets originated
in the Anglo-Saxon period during 410 and 1066,
and they were originally known as pikelets.
They were small, hard, oval-shaped biscuits
cooked on a griddle
and had a pancake-like appearance.
During the Victorian Era, the recipe was altered
to include yeast and bicarbonate soda
to give them a soft, spongy look.
What about its name?
Its origins are unclear, but there are a few suggestions
saying it may have come from a 14th-century reference
to a crompid cake,
which was a crumpled and curled-up cake,
and the Old English word crompeht,
which also means crumpled.
Vas Nicolouzos: Warburtons is a business.
We were founded back in 1876 in Bolton,
and over the last 140 years, we have grown and grown
from a local business to a regional business
to now a national business
to be the No. 1 bread brand in the UK.
Within British culture,
the crumpet plays a really important part
because it is a staple of a British diet, effectively.
We see it, traditionally, over the years
it's always been a breakfast accompaniment.
So, rather than toast, people would have crumpets with jam.
But we've seen that evolve as well,
and, over the years, people now have started
eating crumpets with ham and cheese on top,
and it's become more of a meal accompaniment.
So, the process of actually making a crumpet is
quite complicated and technical
but very simple in its approach.
So, we take our raw material, so, flour, water, yeast,
a little bit of brine.
But what we then do is we need to activate the yeast.
So, the mixing process, we generate a bit of heat
and start to get the batter warming up to around 40 degrees.
At that point, the yeast starts to activate.
And part of the process is the yeast will start to
consume the sugars that are present in flour.
And as they're consuming the sugar,
they're actually, as a byproduct, releasing carbon dioxide.
That's the magic.
We then take that and deposit it onto a hot plate.
So, the hot plate runs at about 200 degrees,
and we deposit fixed amounts of batter into the rings.
As the batter hits the hot plate,
it will set the base of the crumpet.
As the heat then starts to go through the base,
it starts to heat the water and boil the water,
and the water turns to steam.
And as the water and the crumpet
and the heat's going through the batter,
we're actually expanding the CO2 bubbles.
So what happens then is, as the bubbles expand
and the steam is looking for the easiest way out,
it's pushing the CO2 up through the batter.
As that comes through the batter,
it's actually setting the walls of the hole.
So, when the gas is released,
that's how we form the holes in the crumpet.
Claudia: The surfaces of the crumpets are then toasted
for around 20 seconds to give them the finishing touch.
What you may find interesting is that
the crumpet doesn't need to be toasted at all,
as Warburtons told us that it's solely for aesthetics,
as the crumpets are already cooked.
Once toasted, the crumpets then go on
to be cooled in three separate rooms,
each with varying temperatures.
First, starting at 18 degrees Celsius, 15 degrees,
and then 10 degrees.
After being cooled, assistants scan the crumpets,
inspecting each one for their color, porosity,
and consistency in shape.
The crumpets highlighted in this green border
signify that they are good and ready for packaging.
This row here, without the green border,
this means that they're not quite up to the standards
for Warburtons, so they're taken off the line.
These custom-made robotics are capable of picking up
86 crumpets a minute, sending each one
on to the final stage of the process:
packaging.
So, we got a packet of crumpets straight off the line.
I'm actually very excited about this because,
despite having lived in the UK
for more than seven years now,
I've actually never had a crumpet in my life.
I know, it's a disgrace, so I'm gonna make up for it
and give it a try.
It's nice.
I love how it's very crusty in here.
Like, the bottom has a very,
very strong and solid crust,
and the top is, like, spongy, soft.
I would say you almost get two flavors,
you get the savory crust of the bottom side
and then, like, a more sweet taste
of the spongy top side.
It's very nice. I love how the butter has, like,
completely disappeared into the holes,
which means that when you bite into it,
you actually get the buttery taste in there.
The texture is nice and spongy. It's cakey.
And, yeah, it's just a nice discovery for me.
I wish I had known about crumpets before.
Like, where were my British friends when I needed them?
Guys, I had to know about this seven years ago.
Vas: From a production perspective,
when I look at crumpet plants,
we've got three crumpet plants.
And, on average, we produce 36,000 crumpets an hour,
which equates to about 6,000 packets
of six-pack crumpets.
So when you look across a week,
that's equivalent to about 800,000 packets coming out
of that Enfield site alone, every week.
So in order to make 800,000 packets of crumpets a year,
we have to have a shift plan that's robust enough
to facilitate that.
And we run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We have four shifts that operate,
12-hour shifts across the seven days of the week.
We only shut as a business on Christmas day.
So we are actually producing products 364 days of the year,
to make sure that our customers always get what they want.