Buttermilk Pancakes
Lumpy batter, a rested ten minutes, and a pan that is cooler than you think. Most bad pancakes are overmixed, overheated, or both.
- Prep
- 10m
- Cook
- 15m
- Waiting
- 10m
- Total
- 35m
- Serves
- about 10 pancakes
- Effort
- Easy
Method
Tap a step number to mark it done. Tap an ingredient once for got it, twice for need it.
| 2 cups | Whisk the dry ingredients 1m | Fold together until barely combined — lumps are correct 1m Stop while it still looks wrong. Twelve strokes, not thirty. | Rest the batter 10 minutes 10m Lets the flour hydrate and the gluten you did develop relax. | Cook in a buttered pan over medium-low, flipping once 15m Flip when the bubbles at the edge stay open. One flip only. | |
| 2 tbsp | |||||
| 2 tsp | |||||
| 1/2 tsp | |||||
| 1/2 tsp | |||||
| 2 cups | Beat together 2m | ||||
| 2 | |||||
| 3 tbsp | |||||
| as needed | |||||
-
Whisk the dry ingredients
1m- plain flour 2 cups
- caster sugar 2 tbsp
- baking powder 2 tsp
- bicarbonate of soda 1/2 tsp
- fine salt 1/2 tsp
-
Beat together
2m- buttermilk 2 cups
- eggs 2
- melted butter 3 tbsp
-
Fold together until barely combined — lumps are correct
1m- from 1 Whisk the dry ingredients
- from 2 Beat together
Stop while it still looks wrong. Twelve strokes, not thirty.
-
Rest the batter 10 minutes
10m- from 3 Fold together until barely combined — lumps are correct
Lets the flour hydrate and the gluten you did develop relax.
-
Cook in a buttered pan over medium-low, flipping once
15m- from 4 Rest the batter 10 minutes
- butter for the pan as needed
Flip when the bubbles at the edge stay open. One flip only.
Two leaveners, two jobs
Baking powder is self-contained: acid and base in one packet, activated by liquid and again by heat. Bicarbonate of soda needs an external acid, which is what the buttermilk provides. Using both gives you lift at two different moments — in the bowl and in the pan — and the bicarb also raises the pH slightly, which helps the surface brown.
Swap the buttermilk for plain milk and the bicarb has nothing to react with; you get pale, slightly soapy pancakes. If you have no buttermilk, a tablespoon of lemon juice stirred into milk and left five minutes is a workable stand-in.
Lumps are load-bearing
Every stroke of the whisk develops gluten, and gluten makes pancakes chewy. The lumps disappear during the rest as the flour hydrates; the toughness you mix in does not. Fold until you no longer see dry flour and then genuinely stop.
Notes
- Medium-low, not medium-high. The inside needs about three minutes; a hot pan gives you a dark crust over raw batter.
- The first pancake is always the sacrificial one. That is the pan telling you its temperature, not a failure.
- Hold cooked pancakes in a 90 °C oven directly on the rack. On a plate they steam and go limp.