When it comes to pancakes. I feel like we Americans always like to
pretend we're the expert. And it is true that almost all of us are
experts on what a great pancake is. How many of us, when posed the
question "What is your favorite breakfast?", would choose pancakes as
the knee jerk response? We just got back to the US a few weeks ago and
this is the second "weekend breakfast" where we've made some ideal
form of "The American Breakfast". The first was waffles, because well,
my mother-in-law wanted them and like a good son-in-law, I made them.

But pancakes have a special place in the American diaspora. It unites
us. Often when we ran into Americans abroad, the conversation
invariably came to breakfast and how fucked up everyone else's
breakfast is. In Thailand when we were on a sustainability trip in the
North led by a Thai farmer and his American wife, the soft intro to
Thai breakfast was Banana Pancakes. Thais don't eat pancakes for
breakfast! They eat rice with chilies and garlic and maybe some
fermented bean paste or fish.

Jo's son Thon making pancakes

Sure, there have got to be pancake naysayers and pancake haters and
pancake headed people who just don't understand that pancakes are the
pre-eminent American food but I don't give a crap about them at this
moment because I just started reading Jeff Potter's "Cooking for
Geeks" and I wanted to dive right in and see if one of the most
important recipes in America lives up to what I think of as a pancake.

Of course, I'm not always fair when I try a recipe, because I've been
cooking for so long that I just change things. Jeff's comes from a
cool idea I've seen before somewhere.

Here's what Jeff did, as did Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan with their
"A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie" recipe also featured in Jeff's book.

The quantities here are based on the average of eight different pancake recipes from an online search. For each ingredient, I converted the measurement to grams and then calculated that ingredient's percentage of the total weight of the recipe.

Here are his ingredients and amounts:
1 1/2 cups (190g) flour
2 tablespoons (25g) sugar
2 teaspoons (10g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt
2 tablespoons (25g) butter
11/4 cups (330g) milk
2 small or 1 extra-large (80g) eggs

I looked over the recipe and compared it to my mental ratios (that
evolved somewhere in between "Joy of Cooking" and futzing) and noticed
a few differences that I think vastly affect the texture and flavor of
a pancake. Jeff's recipe seemed a little light on fats. I like a
richer pancake I guess. So I bumped mine up a bit with some extra
virgin olive oil. I like using different flours or changing it up. So,
immediately I went all hippy and shit and took away the 1/2 cup of
"flour" (even though he doesn't specify All Purpose, we'll assume he
means that since it's for the layman) and substituted wheat flour.

I also have always used a bit less baking powder, never truly
understanding the relationship of baking powder to rising action
before reading his book, despite working as a professional cook and
chef for several years. While I've always been an uncompromising
curious cook - when teaching younger cooks you'll hear me always
asking "What are you doing?" and "Why would you do that?" or "What
were you thinking?" - in the day to day, guesswork has always suited
me just fine. In fact I've often relished at rubbing it in pastry
chefs' faces. Notwithstanding, there is a place for precision in the
kitchen and I relish in learning that as well, hence picking up his
book.

I also believe in using natural flavoring or spice to sweeten a
pancake so I look to finding other ingredients rather than just using
refined or raw sugar. Today I used honey from western Turkey. Not for
any unique characteristics "Turkish" honey might lend, because those
would be buried in butter and other honey or syrup anyways, but
because I have it and I could. I wanted a little honey ok? Jeez, stop
bothering me. So, I went 50/50 honey and sugar.

Also, I always prefer to use organic or locally sourced ingredients
where possible (besides the honey), not because its the hip thing to
do and everyone is putting LOCAL and ORGANIC on everything to sell
better, but because I actually know some farmers in the U.S. and
abroad that could use a little more demand and inspiration to change
consumers from conventional to organic. And for me the word
conventional means "not thinking creatively" and that's simply no fun.
Cooking is all about having fun and sharing as much of that as
possible.

The other difference between the geek and me comes down to slight
differences in technique, where Jeff uses or suggests a standard test
of drizzling water or aiming his nifty IR thermometer at it to
register the optimal moment when it turns 400F. I resort to putting my
hand over it and saying "yes, that's hot enough" and pouring the
batter in with my wee ladle. Where he looks for bubbles forming, I
look for bubbles and a slight matte finish forming in about a 1/4"
ring around the edge of the pancake. Where Jeff wants an even coloring
and works hard to ensure the batter coats the evenly temped pan I look
for the unevenness as character. Meh, not very different, the guy
knows his shit. Both of us register about a two-minute period before
the initial and ideally only flip.

Cooking one at a time (all-clad stainless)

So, here's the recipe I actually made:

1 cup (137g) flour
1 tablespoon (13g) sugar
1 tablespoon (21g) honey
2 teaspoons (10g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt
2 tablespoons (25g) butter (mine was salted, because that is what I had and I like salt)
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 cup (256g) milk
2 small or 1 extra-large (80g) eggs

I followed Jeff's procedures for mixing and then cooking down pretty
much to a T. The pancakes were super tasty but still not the perfect
pancake. They were better than average, no pun intended, but somehow
felt a little over aerated. Is that even possible, a too fluffy
pancake? I usually use a bit less baking powder, hrm, maybe that was
it? Next time I'll have to be a serious eater  and put my variation up against "Cooking
for Geeks" and see what the real
differences are.

My short stack 

If you want to try Jeff's recipe out for yourself go get the book. I can't believe how funny
and helpful it is and while I'm not done reading it, it seems a pretty
fair and balanced introduction to cooking (and more). I'll keep you
and Jeff posted on what this angry cook thinks about it as I find time
to look it over and try out more cool shit.

By the way, he mentions a really cool online tool that just blew my
mind while I was writing this post and working on the conversions.
Want to know what 1T sugar in
grams is? Check it out.