Have you ever noticed how many cultures around the world have invented a food that’s some
form of flat cooked dough?
That many people can’t be wrong: Pancakes and all of their international cousins are
delicious.
But everyone you meet swears by a different pancake recipe.
So how do you griddle up the perfect pancake for your lazy Saturday morning breakfast?
First, a lot of pancake die-hards swear by buttermilk.
What could weird, sour, thick milk possibly bring to the table that perfectly innocent,
normal milk can’t?
A lot of things, actually.
For one thing, a lot of people do enjoy the sourness of buttermilk.
And buttermilk also contains diacetyl, a flavor compound also found in butter that imparts...wait
for it...a buttery flavor.
But it’s not just for flavor.
Buttermilk is also important to the mechanics of your pancakes, helping them reach the towering
heights required for fluffy pancake nirvana.
Harmless bacteria munch on sugars to produce lactic acid in buttermilk.
Because it’s an acid, it can take part in the classic chemical reaction you’ve known
about ever since your first elementary school volcano project [on screen: acid + base].
Your pancake recipe also calls for baking soda, which is a base.
When lactic acid and baking soda get together, they produce bubbles of carbon dioxide gas.
But instead of whooshing out all at once, the carbon dioxide fizz gets trapped in your
pancake batter.
Those bubbles expand until the batter cooks and solidifies around them.
Plenty of bubbles mean your pancakes will be light, fluffy, and tall.
Be sure to cook your batter right away and don’t rest it for too long so the bubbles
don’t have time to escape.
Without buttermilk, your pancakes won’t rise and you might as well be eating shoe
leather.
Well, that’s not QUITE true.
If you’re not a fan of buttermilk, other recipes use baking powder -- which contains
a powdered acid and base that start to react when heated -- to achieve optimal pancake
floof.
Leaveners, people!
Don’t heat up the griddle without them.
Don’t have either buttermilk or baking powder
on hand?
You can add the acid yourself by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per 1 cup of regular
milk.
That’ll react with the baking soda just like lactic acid would.
A little extra baking soda will help your pancakes brown, too.
Browning happens thanks to Maillard reactions, a complex cascade of reactions that lead to
chemical deliciousness, taking place in the presence of heat, proteins and sugar.
Click on that there card to learn more about Maillard’s delicious chemistry.
Those reactions are helped along when they take place in a slightly basic environment.
Having just a little baking soda that’s not neutralized by acid helps pancakes develop
color and flavor.
Not too much, though, or they’ll brown way too quickly and taste burnt.
Pro tip: our expert reviewer Dr. Matt Hartings says if you really want to enhance Maillard,
fold some melted butter or oil into the batter.
Recipes we’ve found suggest 1/4c of butter for every 2 c of milk.
But here at Reactions we encourage that you experiment with your recipes to develop a
Law of Extreme Tastiness.
Then there’s the maple syrup you drizzle over those warm, fluffy beauties.
Maple syrup comes from the sap of trees belonging to the genus Acer.
And while it’s mostly water and sugar, there are also minerals and organic molecules that
give it a complex flavor profile.
When the sap is heated to condense it into syrup, even more flavor develops, as well
as the characteristic brown color.
That’s thanks to even more Maillard reactions taking place in the sap.
Many of the flavor molecules in maple syrup are phenolic compounds, and while some phenolics
may have positive or negative effects on flavor, the god of all phenolics is vanillin.
Vanillin is in vanilla extract as well as occurring naturally in maple syrup, and it’s
anything but plain vanilla.
In maple syrup it seems to add to the richness of the overall flavor, as well as helping
to blend the other flavor notes together.
Additional phenolics like quebecol form as the sap is heated.
Some of those other flavor participants are maple lactone, which shockingly tastes maple-y;
guaiacol, which adds woody or smoky notes; and caramel furanone, which tastes like maple
and burnt sugar and adds richness.
Maple syrup even contains a decent amount of riboflavin, aka vitamin B2.
But the main ingredient is still sugar -- a minimum of 66% to be considered proper syrup.
So keep in mind while you’re guzzling that it’s not exactly a health potion.
Finally, you might be tempted to beat your pancake batter until it’s perfectly smooth
and there are no lumps of dry ingredients to be seen.
Those poor lumps.
What did they ever do to you?
The thing is, over-mixing your pancake batter will make it tough.
There are two proteins in wheat flour, glutenin and gliadin, that combine when they meet water
to form gluten.
Gluten forms a sort of protein-y mesh in your batter.
A little of that is good because it helps trap those bubbles you worked so hard to make
with the buttermilk, and helps your pancakes rise.
But a lot of gluten is chewy and makes your pancakes tough.
A little fat slows down gluten development, which is why some melted butter in your recipe
is a good idea.
And as we noted, that melted butter also enhances tasty Maillard browning.
But over-mixing the batter still develops gluten.
So just mix the batter until it’s combined, and take your aggression out at the gym or
something.
Seriously, put the whisk down.
This is breakfast, not Tuesday morning boot camp.
We hope these pancake tips help you whip up a better breakfast, or at least that all this
gratuitous slow-motion footage has made you hungry.
Personally, I’m starving.
If I wasn’t tied to a microphone right now I’d already be at IHOP.
Are you a pancake person or a waffle person?
Let us know in the comments, and hit like and subscribe while you’re scrolling.
Thanks for watching!