Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Pancakes

============
Nov 5, 2015 : I would like to add some notes.
- Here the baking powder and baking soda creates the fluffiness. The baking powder acts twice (which is why it's called double-acting baking powder) when 1) it's humidified (i.e. mixed with milk/ water) 2) when it's heated up.
- So, when you mix dried and wet ingredients and let the batter sit for 15 minutes, it will bubble up.  Leaving it for a hour won't be a problem for me, but I notice leaving it for 8 hours wouldn't be as good as freshly-made batter because baking powder keeps reacting with humidity while the batter sitting on the working table. It loses power.
- Baking powder will reacts the again when the batter is popped into the oven. So, if your wet ingredients are hot, baking powder will reacts while you mix the batter too, and that's not good.
- The question is , if you want to prep for a party, you can do this ahead of time by prepare the wet in one bowl and the dries in another. Let them sit at room temp before you are ready to mix it.
- Mixing bananas and berries are good idea, it sticks to the griddle sometimes even when I use non-stick pan, dah ??!! . For those who dont', you need lots of butter on the pan. :-) Real butter is not gonna kill you, I guarantee.
- The last point here, Alton brown looks even better when he grows older. He still my culinary hero. Love him.
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Thanks to Alton Brown, these pancakes are awesome. Fluffy and light. I don't need to explain as you can see from the photo. I have manuka honey and Canadian maple syrup....which one would you like?


I can't help digging a fork in the middle of the stack. Sorry if this looks like a crime scene for pancake lovers.

Recipe: Adapted from Alton brown's, more sugar added for my version.



Dry ingredients
1/2tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
3 tsp sugar
2 cup All-Purposed flour

Wet Ingredients: Mix together
a) 4 Tbls melted butter + 2 yolks ; mix together
b) 2 cups buttermilk or yoghurt at "room temperature" mix with the white. Before adding the whites, you can warm up the buttermilk in the microwave to body temperature. Body temperature is easy to tell , as you dip your finger in the buttermilk, you can barely tell whether it's hot or cold, it's just the same as your body temp, that's all.

Mix a+b together to team up the wet-team.

Once you mix the dry with wet ingredients, stir until "just" mix. You'll see small crumbs and those are fine. If you overwork, your jaw may be dislocated while chewing.
Enjoy!

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG So many of my favourites on your blog and these pancakes look sumptious - delicious - gorgious! It makes the ones at "Little Home" feel kiddy works.. Can you teach May? Thank you so much again for the Sukhothai hotel booking in Bkk na krub :)

Unknown said...

oh dear, I love the wonderful mixture of fluffy pancakes with Canadian maple syrup! mouth watering

Anonymous said...

I LOVE these pancakes. Best thing Alton Brown has ever done. I have made these for my family almost every weekend for the last year or so. I add 1 tsp of vanilla extract and (sometimes) fresh blueberries.

Anonymous said...

i think this recipe is cool, i should try it, i never added butter with it before.

Anonymous said...

Why separate the eggs? Thanks, Melissa

Jennifer C said...

I don't think there is anything that I am more picky about; Moreso because when I eat pancakes I am usually hunched over, red-eyed and complaining of a head-ache and if my pancake is too flat or too cakey I will break down into a hung-over mess.


That being said, this is the best recipe I have ever seen. I have bookmarked it, and I come back often to optimistically contemplate the deliciousness and drool over the pictures.

velvie said...

The pancakes look delicious!can i just ask, how long does the batter last if stored in fridge? and if i want to substitue buttermilk with youghurt,will the taste be different in anyway?thanks!

Nuntiya said...

Yes , you can use plain yoghurt instead of buttermilk (most of the time I use yoghurt as buttermilk sometimes is very difficult to find in my neighborhood). It doesn't effect much on the taste.

For the batter , I would suggest a day or two would be fine, I never leave it longer than that. What I 'd rather do is mix the dried ingredient , put them in a big jar, with a label of how much the rest liquid ingredients needed. It's like a quick mix. So whenever you need pancakes, just add eggs , milk, yoghurt .... stir ... and you're ready to go !

Anonymous said...

I make pancakes all the time, so I was very excited about this recipe.
These turned out pretty flat, kind of eggy in texture and a bit greasy. I tried adding more baking powder and some vanilla. It didn't really redeem this recipe.

Am I the only one who was disappointed?

Jo said...

I've made these pancakes twice, halving the recipe both times. The batter was very thick making it a challenge to get them cooked through without burning.

But! They turned out great, very fluffy and delicious!

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Batter was not at all too thick so I don't know what went wrong there. Followed recipe except used a sugar sub. Delicious, perfect pancakes. Gotta love Alton!

Rebecca L. said...

What is the picture on this page of your blog under pumpkin pie. It is some kind of cake? Can you tell me what it is?

Anonymous said...

Best pancakes I've ever made! The recipe looks complicated but it is really easy. The pancakes are huge! This easily makes a dozen 3 1/2 to 4" pancakes. I cooked on electric griddle at 275 so they could get done in the middle before burning on the outside. The batter looked very lumpy (almost like curdled)so I was nervous putting them on the griddle. I thought I had done something wrong, but they turned out great. I did have to spread the batter around a little because it is so thick. I usually do boxed mixes for my kids, but these were so easy that may be a thing of the past. Especially since it makes plenty to have extras for freezing for busy school-day mornings. Thank you so much for posting! I have a new go-to recipe! :D

Sus said...

Ditto all the "best pancakes I ever made" comments!! I used whole wheat pastry flour and added banana. Delish and thank you!

Anonymous said...

The best pancakes I've ever made and the only recipe I will use from now on! I followed the recipe exactly how you explained. They were fluffy & perfect! Thanks so much! :)

Anonymous said...

This recipe is awful!!!! So thick it looks like biscuit dough. I am a seasoned cook and this recipe simply does not work!!!!

Doris said...

I made these for our brunch for Father's Day and I added blueberries to half the batter.

This made 5 regular buttermilk pancakes and 5 blueberry buttermilk pancakes.

Well, actually all the pancakes were fairly good sized and they were all super tasty and fluffy.

I rarely follow recipes to the T, but I almost did yours with the exception of the blueberries.

I didn't need any syrup on mine and at the pancake plain.

Thank you so much!

Unknown said...

So good! No problems. Didn't have buttermilk so I added 1T vinegar per cup of milk. Fluffy and delicious. Will keep in my recipe file.

Anonymous said...

A great tip for adding blueberries. Try using frozen wild blueberries, thaw quickly in microwave and sprinkle on top of freshly poured batter. Because of the thickness of the batter, you can lightly tap or spread into wet batter and cook pancake as you normally would. Flipping only once, of course. The smaller 'wild' blueberries pack more flavor than the larger 'cultivated' berries even when fresh and adding on top of the batter once poured avoids the 'blue pancake' syndrome. 1 cup is all you need with this recipe. YUMMY!

Anonymous said...

Can I add this batter to a waffle maker? Will they come out right?

Anonymous said...

These were excellent! For some reason every time I make pancakes the batter gets flat and runny by the time I get to the bottom of the bowl dipping out the pancake batter. Sooooo frustrating! This did NOT happen to me this time! I was so happy! The flavor was amazing and they were so fluffy. It did take a while to cook the pancakes to cook all the way through, but they were beautiful pancakes! I will do this again and again!

Anonymous said...

Hi, I made these last week and they were divine. Absolutely, they were just the right amount of fluffiness and tasted delicious. So I decided to make them for guests this weekend and here's what happened: When I mixed the two 'wet teams', my butter clumped up because the buttermilk/egg white combination was so cold. I did everything I could to try to get rid of the clumps but I couldn't figure out how to resolve the issue. In the end, I just mixed in the dry ingredients and made the pancakes - but they were not fluffy at all and they came out a bit oily too because of the texture.
Please can you tell me how to avoid the butter clumping? I am positive that's what made the difference.

Nuntiya said...

Hi,

you can microwave the butter milk til it warm, i.e. not too warm that you can dip your finger in it without an 'ouch' or scienctifically speaking 210 F or approx 48 C . this way you ensure the emulsification is done right when mix with something that hardens when cold such as butter/cheese/gelatin/chocolate (chocolate is another story, more details depends on what you r making). Thank you for asking cause I guess some of home bakers have the similar problem.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your response regarding the buttermilk...I wonder if it would suffice to take it out of the fridge and let it cool to room temperature? I'm just wondering if the eggs might start cooking if I heat up the milk to the temperature you described?
Also, I had left my prepared mix out for 90 minutes or so - do you think this could also have an effect on the fluffiness factor? Maybe I should have put it in the fridge until I was ready to cook - I did not since I already had so many butter clumps.

Nuntiya said...

yes you can leave at room temp.but heating the butter milk alone to the "warm" point (butter milk only not with eggs) won't hurt the recipe too. The eggs coalhultes at around 65 c (150 f) so warm the butter milk up would be okay .

then the issue with leaving the ready to bake batter 1.5 hour wont be a problem. I suggest you can wrap it and leave in the fridge though. My kitchen in Bangkok is super hot so, I just need to put everything in the fridge .

Anonymous said...

Didn't you have it so that you separate the egg whites and then mix the yolk separately with the butter, It doesn't say that now?

Nuntiya said...

Actually, I mixed them in a regular way i.e the eggs mix with sugar, then pour in cold butter milk, mix well. Then , while mix vigorously, pour in hot melted butter so that you get the wet team ready. It comes out fine every single time. But seems like the separated egg method is fool-proof, So I leave the fool proof method as it was before.

Unknown said...

I feel like a complete novice because I keep reading to pop these in the oven but I can't find any time or temperature. Am I missing that you just cook these on your grill or are they really baked? I tried to find Alton's recipe but the ones that came up had 3 times the amount of baking powder. What am I missing?

holly said...

I am finally commenting, after using this buttermilk pancake recipe for almost a year now. This is by far my family's favorite pancake recipe, and we have tried a lot! These pancakes are perfectly mouth watering, fluffy, and all you could ask for in the perfect pancake.

And thank you for the straightforward post without having to scroll through 15+ pictures just to find the recipe! :) Much appreciated since I jump on here a lot to get the recipe, although I almost have it memorized at this point ;)

Anonymous said...

I call bull**** you deff are not a seasond chef if you think this recipe does not work and secondly all pancakes are pretty much the same you just can't mess them up so if you did your an awful cool my 5 year old cooks pancakes already

Anonymous said...

Whoa... Damn! While I agree that most pancake recipes are similar (though not "the same") and sometimes, depending on humidity and other minor variables my pancake batter (And I most definitely AM a seasoned cook) might be a bit thicker than the last time I made it (easily remedied prior to cooking) but there's no reason to be so insulting. I don't agree with the original poster's assertion that this recipe "is awful", and am inclined to believe that maybe it was the cook and not the recipe. Still not reason enough to be so insulting. Also, if you *are* going to attempt to be that insulting, at least go to the trouble to use proper spelling and grammar.

Anonymous said...

Made this am nice and puffy in the skillet put them on the plate and they flattened out felt like they didn't cook rite turned out like rubber what did do wrong made half the recipe to see how they would come looking forward to eating them a little disappointed

Peggy said...

I tried this recipe this morning, EPIC FAIL ! I've gone over the recipe many times have no idea what I did wrong. I only regret the wasted ingredients.

Anonymous said...

I tried the recipe, as written, and they were divine! FINALLY found my go-to buttermilk pancake recipe!

Anonymous said...

Made these for Christmas breakfast, and the basic recipe was absolutely fabulous! They were the best pancakes I have ever made, and people devoured them! They were light and very fluffy. I combined the basic recipe with the seasonings I found for a gingerbread pancake recipe: allspice, cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla. I even put in a few blueberries for the blueberry lovers' pancakes. One thing I have learned is that I have much better luck cooking pancakes when I use a large, flat, electric griddle. My pancakes cooked in a skillet were never great. But 425 degrees on the nonstick griddle is perfect. (And you can always find kitchen appliances at Salvation Army or Goodwill for less than $10. My electric griddle was $4.99 at Salvation Army.) Thanks for a guest-worthy pancake recipe. I am going to take your advice and keep a container of the dry ingredients on hand so I just add eggs and milk.

Anonymous said...

Many years later...I too had the same experience. I'm sad!

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Unknown said...

Hi..it's a best recipe l ever found before this.I tried this recipe for breakfast.my kids loved it.so.. fuffy and tasty.thank you for your recipe.marvelous.

Jeff Stucker said...

Thanks for sharing. Great post very Informative, also checkout Spiros Pancake House

Unknown said...

I think this recipe is a great,basic, pancake recipe. The rise on them is awesome and fluffy! I like the option of using buttermilk or yogurt. The past two times I made the recipe, I have used room temperature yogurt. These were firsts for me as I have always used milk or buttermilk.

I have not bothered, either time to separate the yolks from the whites. This seems unnecessary to me and any reason for it is unapparent to me. You are welcome to enlighten me. Perhaps, the whites could be beaten and folded into the yogurt for more volume. I might try this for the fun of it. May be a little overkill. LOL After the yogurt was brought to room/body temperature, I added the egg and the melted butter to it. Both times, after adding the wet ingredients into the dry, I was careful not to over mix. I left the mixture to sit for 15 minutes to rise.

The first time I made the recipe, I played with it and used a little vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. They were very tasty. This second time, I left them plain and found them lacking in flavor. They do need, at least, some vanilla or almond extract, something.

The first time I cooked them in a cast iron skillet and learned the challenge of cooking them all the way through on too high a temperature. I had a good bit of nearly burned pancakes. This second time, I used my electric griddle, cooking them somewhere between 275 and 300. This worked well for me. I saw where in the post on December 25th, the lady cooked hers on 425 on her Salvation Army find. I doubt that her griddle was actually hitting 425, but it seems she has found the sweet spot on her griddle.

This is a good recipe and can be adjusted easily to meet personal tastes!

Thanks for sharing!

Donald

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Mike Henery said...

Thanks for this amazing fluffy pancakes recipe. Best ever food of mine for breakfast with a cup of coffee keep sharing with us the amaizing recipes of order breakfast quick recipe.
Thanks a lot again.
how to make pancakes