It was pancake Tuesday this past week, but since I’m not Catholic, this has less bearing on my life. Except for that pancake part. I’m always down with eating pancakes. So, some time ago, I sat for a talk that Hervé gave for the basics of his (then) new book. There are some very cool bits of science behind it, and being the nerd I am, it appealed entirely. Of course, it was the most basic of all the things he showed us that I took away and applied to the making of pancakes soon after.

HOT WATER = STEAM

Right, so nothing new. But instead of adding more milk to the mix (which I used to do), I added more water and found my pancakes were, in fact, fluffier. In my attempt to make pancakes (which I would snack on throughout the day that I made them) healthier yet still tasty, I began my experimentation on flour ratios (all whole wheat just wasn’t tasty) and water-to-milk ratios (fluffy to protein content). Here are the results.

PANCAKES À LA HERVÉ

Re-named from Whole Wheat Pancake #8 (yeah, I’m creative like that), this name-change is largely because I thought that the title of this article made a better recipe name that what I originally had. Also, I figured that it was largely due to Hervé’s talk that prompted me to play experiment with my food. And so…

Ingredients

  • 1 egg, large
  • 15 ml vanilla extract [6 g] (1 tbsp)
  • 3 g salt (1/2 tsp)
  • 80 g whole wheat flour (1/2 cup)
  • 80 g white flour(1/2 cup)
  • 3 g baking powder (1/2 tsp)
  • 65 ml skim milk [55 g] (1/4 cup)
  • 130 ml water [108 g] (1/2 cup)
  • 30 ml water [25 g] (2 tbsp)
  • 55 g sugar (1/4 cup)

Directions

  1. Beat egg and 1/2 cup of water. Beat until foamy. Add in sugar, salt and vanilla.
  2. Mix in white flour and baking powder. Should have a thick consistency.
  3. Add milk and the remaining 2 tbsp water, then whole wheat flour. Mix until smooth.
  4. Drop in a tbsp (snack-sized!) into a frying pan on medium-high heat. Flip when bubbles cover the surface of the pancake. For best results, flip over sooner than later when bubbling occurs. See dorky video blow.
  5. Cook for ~1 min more and then remove from pan and serve.

Note 1: I suppose you could be unfussy and do all the liquid at once, but I wasn’t willing to mess with the order once I had it down. DO NOT USE MORE MILK! Water is better here, as the molecules in the batter get released as steam by the pan’s heat. Milk… not as much, since it has fat in it. Thanks Dr. Hervé!!

Note 2: If you have more batter/pancakes than you need, just cook them up and store them in an air-tight container. You can quickly reheat them in the toaster for a quick breakfast the next day!