There’s a funny thing about my infatuation with pancakes: I almost never order them in restaurants, even breakfast joints that specialize in them. That’s mainly because the standard-issue American pancake topped with butter and maple syrup is too heavy and too dry, unless soaked in syrup, which is bad for you (and very expensive in places that charge extra for real maple syrup).
I’m not a pancake snob. At home, I make some pretty straightforward pancakes for my wife and daughter. But when they reach for the maple syrup, I reach for peanut butter, honey or onion.
For me, the pancake isn’t only, nor even chiefly, a breakfast food. Rather, it’s a kind of bread, but generally easier and faster to make. In fact, a pancake really is, for the most part, a quick bread, leavened by something other than yeast—although there are some fantastic pancake recipes that include yeast—and requiring no rolling and kneading. Pancake batter, of course, can include any or all of the various types of flours and grains used to make bread. Just about any sandwich filling can be just as tasty and satisfying between two pancakes as it is between two pieces of bread. Similarly, all the ingredients that bakers add to bread batter—dates, raisins, nuts, fruits and berries of all kinds, olives, garlic, cheese—can be mixed into pancake batter with highly palatable results.
While there are many good packaged mixes that you just add water to, my favorite pancake recipes call for milk and eggs. I also prefer buckwheat or sourdough pancakes to those made with white flour. Once I have a savory, protein-rich cake to work with, I can head in nearly any culinary direction imaginable. I’ve made open-faced steak and cheese sandwiches on pancakes, sopped up navy bean soup with pancakes, used pancakes as a substitute for hot dog rolls. Some dishes are better served by a crepe-like pancake made from a thinner, lighter batter; for other meals, the best results come with a thicker pancake made more like a scone or biscuit.
In recent years, many of my best uses of pancakes have come in response to an overabundance of produce from our garden—zucchini pancakes topped with sour cream and chives, anyone?—or from local farm stands. Last year, we ran into a bargain on blueberries, which allowed for the development of the Vida Blue, a pancake stuffed with blueberries and topped with a thick blueberry syrup This year, I’m feeling inspired by my mulberry tree, which is heavy with fruit, and by a recipe for black bean soup, the ingredients of which—beans, corn, carrots, celery, garlic, onion, peppers and tomato—can simply be added to batter and fried in a hot pan.
The pancake has been around for about as long as humans have been cooking over fire; it appears, in various splendid forms, in nearly every culture. It isn’t so much a specific dish or cuisine as it is a culinary vehicle designed to transport raw food to a cooked conclusion, inviting endless innovation.
