Nix the pancake mix for breakfast perfection

If you’re like me, your first pancakes came from a griddle manned by your dad on the weekends. My father as chef was a special breed, one whose culinary skills — as with many men of the Boomer generation — were limited to summertime barbeque and Sunday breakfast. Indeed, pancakes likely became “Dad’s specialty” due to one of their finer selling points: They’re extraordinarily simple to make from scratch.

“There’s no need to use a mix when it’s so easy to make them,” marvels Maryana Vollstedt, author of The Big Book of Breakfast. “It’s just about as fast as mixing up a mix.”

The typical American hotcake is soft, spongy and golden brown, with the slightest of crispiness at the edges, and getting there takes mastering the three tenets of pancake cookery: Batter, griddle, and flipping.

The secret to good batter is getting it smooth without overmixing, which can create a chewy cake. One trick to smooth batter, says Gunn Nesse, is to take things slow.

“Put the flour in gradually, instead of all at once,” says Nesse, who’s served her mother’s thin Norwegian pancakes at a monthly, standing-room-only pancake breakfast in Edmonds, Wash. since 1991. If you’re aiming for fluffier pancakes, it pays to use buttermilk — the extra fat helps plump up the batter — but restrained mixing with a flat whisk can help, too, since it adds a little air.

If you’re aching for fruit in your cakes, be choosy about what you use. “Some fruits are so juicy, they give juice off in the batter, and they get soggy and it won’t cook,” cautions Doug Grina, co-owner of Al’s Breakfast in Minneapolis, a tiny diner with a national reputation for pancakes. Blueberries, with solid skins, work well, as do minced apples or bananas; anything bigger or juicier should be added once the cake is on the grill, not beforehand.

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The trickiest part? “Matching the batter to grill heat,” says Grina. “It’s a delicate dance.” So delicate, in fact, that even a pro like Grina uses an electric griddle at home, set around 375-380 degrees F. For heavier batters, such as buckwheat, you’ll want to set the temperature as much as 10 degrees lower — otherwise the cake's outside will begin to burn before the center has cooked.

If you’re cooking on a stove, measure temperature the way your grandmother did: Flick a few droplets of water onto the griddle. If they bounce around, you’re at a good temperature. (If it evaporates immediately, it’s too hot, and if it sits there it’s too cold.)

Once you’ve got your batter ready and the griddle hot (and, if it’s not nonstick, lightly oiled with a high burning-point oil such as canola or soybean), it’s time to get down to business. For regular-sized pancakes, use either 1/4 or 1/3 measuring cup to scoop out batter, and pour it from a height of about 3” above the griddle — that will help ensure you get a round, good-sized cake that will be easy to flip.

The best gauge of temperature is to do one or two test pancakes first. A cake is beginning to cook when the edges dry, and should be ready to flip once you see dry-edged bubbles holding shape on top. Once they appear, check the underside, and if it’s golden brown, it’s time to flip — a move you should only do once — and get that same golden color on the other side. (If bubbles are dry-edged, but the underside is pale, your griddle is too cool; if the underside is very dark, the griddle is too hot.)

Once both sides have achieved the color of honey, you’re ready to serve — and you’d best do it quick. Though plenty of cooks like to stack their cakes in the oven to keep them warm, it’s difficult to keep them from getting either dried out from too much heat, or soggy from sweating.

Your best bet? Aim for a family, weekend-breakfast feel: Butter, syrup, and fruit on the table, ready to soak into a steady stream of cakes and feed to an eager crew. Dad would be proud.