The Plain German Pancake
two shells, straight out of the oven, waiting to be filled
Two of them in their pans, empty, risen into bowls with golden walls and a pool of butter at the bottom. This is the thing itself, before anybody decides what goes in it.
There is no leavening in it. No baking powder, no soda, no yeast. It climbs on steam alone — a thin wet batter hits a pan at 425°F, the water in it flashes to steam, and the eggs set around the expansion. That is why every rule here is about heat and nothing else.
Learn this one and the five variants on this site are the same recipe with fruit in it.
- Feeds
- 4
- Hands-on
- 10 minutes
- In the oven
- 20 minutes
- Leavening
- None — steam
What you need
Four things
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2/3 cup flour
- 2/3 cup whole milk, warmed
- 1/2 tsp salt
And
- 4 tbsp butter, for the pan
- 2 tbsp sugar, if it is going to be sweet — leave it out if it is not
- 1 tsp vanilla, same
- A 10-inch cast-iron skillet
How it goes
1 — Everything at room temperature
Cold eggs and cold milk make a cold batter, and a cold batter hitting a hot pan rises noticeably less. Half an hour on the counter, or eggs in warm water for five minutes.
2 — Blend it completely smooth, twenty seconds
A blender is better than a whisk here — you want no lumps at all and a batter the consistency of single cream. Lumps become dense spots that do not rise.
3 — Rest the batter thirty minutes
The flour hydrates and the bubbles you beat in settle out. A rested batter climbs higher than one used immediately, and this is the easiest free improvement in the recipe.
pro tip — It keeps overnight in the fridge. Take it out half an hour before it is wanted.
4 — Pan into a 425°F oven for fifteen minutes
Empty and dry. The pan has to be as hot as the oven, which takes far longer than the oven takes to get there. This is the step that decides everything.
5 — Butter in until it foams and just browns
Pan out, butter in, swirled up the sides. It should foam immediately and start to smell nutty. If it sits there slowly melting, the pan was not hot enough.
6 — Batter in and straight back into the oven
Poured into the centre. Speed matters — every second on the stove is heat leaving the pan.
7 — Twenty minutes, and the door stays shut
It climbs the sides, goes gold and blisters. Opening the door before eighteen minutes drops the temperature and it falls on the spot and does not come back.
8 — It sinks. That is correct.
Within a minute of coming out the middle collapses and leaves a bowl with raised walls — which is exactly the shape you want, because it is what holds the filling. Every photograph of one, including this one, is of a pancake that has already sunk.
Lemon and sugar if you want nothing else. Everything else on this site starts here. LFG.