Extra fluffy, rich pancakes

Pancakes are always a wonderful treat. Here's my foolproof recipe for making very rich, very fluffy pancakes. [Skip straight to recipe]

TEXTURE

The trick to super fluffy pancakes, is to have low gluten development, and having lots of air in the pancakes.

Some gluten is necessary, to catch the air bubbles, but too much will make your pancakes feel chewy. Apart from using a lower gluten flour (or mixing cornstarch with our AP flour), we can reduce gluten development by not letting the flour soak in liquid for longer than necessary, and by not overworking the flour.

These air bubbles are incorporated in two ways, one with baking soda, the other by beating egg whites into a foam with stiff peaks, then folding the foam into the batter. Using an electric beater/whisk helps a lot, but this can also be done with a hand whisk (balloon whisk). Having a clean bowl is necessary, and a pinch of sugar and/or cream of tartar helps. Strictly speaking, this isn't necessary, and you will still have delicious pancakes if you just mix everything together, but we are talking about extra fluffy here.

Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate breaks down into sodium carbonate, water and carbon dioxide.

2 NaHCO3 (s) -> Na2 CO3 (s) + H2 O(g) + CO2 (g)

Using a little of that in our recipe will help, but too much will create a bitter, metallic taste, so don't overuse this. If you are sensitive to this bitterness, half the amount of baking soda from the below recipe.

FUTURE EXPERIMENTS (1) - 50/50 Corn flour / AP flour

FUTURE EXPERIMENTS (2) - Add some mirin, which is slightly acidic to further activate the baking soda.

FLAVOR

Aside from sweetness, other flavor notes that I'm hoping to hit are that of vanilla, butter and cream.

I use homemade vanilla extract with some high proof alcohol (or rum) and grade B vanilla beans. This lends a wonderful fragrance to the pancakes.

Instead of just milk, one can substitute some buttermilk or cream, with a 50/50 ratio to the milk. Alternatively, add a little yogurt into it.

The butter can be melted and browned in a pan to bring out some of the nutty flavors.

The dipping sauce should be done with maple syrup and melted butter if you have it. Honey or other types of syrup if you don't. Good ingredients, simply done, will complement each other.

STORAGE

It's possible to premix the dry ingredients and put them in the fridge way in advance, and to have the milk/.buttermilk / vanilla mixed ahead of time. Then you just need to melt your butter, beat your eggs and mix it all together when you want pancakes.

PREP:

1) Melt (optionally brown) your butter in a sauce pan. Half for the sauce, half for your wet ingredients.

2) Mix your dry ingredients together

3) Mix your wet ingredients together, except for the butter (let it cool)

4) Start beating your egg whites to stiff peaks

5) Add your butter to the wet ingredients, and your wet ingredients together with the dry ingredients

6) Carefully fold in your egg whites with the rest of the batter

COOKING:

1) Preheat your saucepan, and melt some butter / bacon grease (or your oil of choice) over a medium low fire.

2) Once the butter starts to foam / oil is hot, pour in around 1/3 - 1/4 of the batter (around 100g, or 1.5 ladles or 3/4 of a cup if you are actually measuring)

3) Once you see bubbles slowly appearing and popping, flip.

4) Let it cook 2 - 3 minutes on the new side to get some color, then serve.

DIPPING SAUCE:

I like my butter and maple syrup well mixed, in a dipping bowl on the side. Feel free to serve it anyway you prefer.