high-bar baking

I usually exclude breakfast-sweet-foods from the category of “baking,” and thus from the blog. But I was too excited about this recipe to keep it to myself. 

For many years, I made Preppy Kitchen’s pancakes, which I heartily recommend. Those were my first foray into the world of not-a-boxed-mix, and they converted me from my previous opinion of always waffles, never pancakes. If you’re comparing boxed mixes, my stance still stands. If you make his, though, do be sure to watch the video too, because some things are inconsistent between the video and the written recipe (salt, maybe?), and you should make your own judgments. 

But I’m always in the market for an improvement, so I was excited to see Lagerstrom post a pancakes video a few weeks ago. His waffles recipe is my reigning champ, so I was excited to see what he had in store for me. The waffles are yeasted, by the way, and once you go there you’ll never go back. 

I waited with baited breath to see what kind of chef-y things he’d have me do. I wanted a poolish, I wanted browned butter, I wanted to be wowed. The recipe writeup had me disappointed. I watched the video to see what his results looked like, and they seemed promising enough to put aside my reservations. And my bar is low. I like experimenting, what can I say. 

Still a little indignant that he has you melt butter without browning it, but fine. I confess I probably wouldn’t have noticed in the final pancake, but getting out a pot to melt butter without browning it still feels like a wasted dish. He uses an aggressive amount of buttermilk and leavener. These pancakes rose. The height is nothing short of impressive. And they taste great. He nails it when he says they’re fluffy but not insubstantial. It’s food you’re eating. Which I would say, unless you’re serving a crowd-crowd, probably cut the recipe in half. Although it is nice that he basically uses an entire quart of buttermilk, which is nearly impossible to pull off. 

The chef-y thing he did that I now have to replicate always — he used a thermometer gun (good thing I was back at my parents’ place) to check the temperature of the griddle. He keeps it steady at 350 (pretty sure) the entire way through. It’s genius. No test pancake required, and perfectly golden finished products each time. He doesn’t grease the griddle (yes, that made me nervous too), and it worked? He was right on that count, too, that it would have been too much of a gilded lily. 

The pancake can stand on its own.