The Easy 1-Step Trick For Fluffier Pancakes

Pancakes may be among the first foods a home cook attempts to make. After all, the batter is usually easy, whether you make it from scratch or use a boxed mix. Even from an early age, it's a dish that is typically easy to flip out, and no fancy ingredients are needed—flour, baking soda, baking powder, some salt, milk, sugar, and sometimes butter for flavor.

But if your knowledge of how to make pancakes hasn't evolved from your first batches 10, 20, even 50 years ago, it's time to learn something that will take your pancake-making skills from good to expert-level.

The Single Best Step for Fluffier Pancakes

The best advice I can give you for better, fluffier pancakes is to make the batter and walk away. You read that correctly. Walk away.

A quick resting period is great for pancake batter because it gives the flour a chance to absorb the liquid. That hydration is key for lighter, fluffier pancakes.

Resting also gives the protein and starches a chance to develop and relax so the pancakes are taller and loaded with air, not as chewy and dense as some pancakes can be. The batter is also better mixed after a period of rest, and that gives the leavening agents (i.e., baking soda and baking powder, which help the pancakes lift as they cook) a chance to spread throughout the mixture evenly.

Don't leave the batter to rest forever, of course. It can be as brief as 10 to 15 minutes, which is our suggestion in our recipe for Old-Fashioned Pancakes. Thirty minutes is great, too. You could go longer—some people suggest an overnight rest for pancake batter—but that extra time isn't necessary in our experience. Plus, if the batter sits too long, it can turn ultra-thick and will produce leathery pancakes. The leavening agents may also stop working, leaving you with flat, chewy flapjacks.

Any pancake batter will thicken up during a period of rest. That's OK. Hydrated flour will be more dense. But if the pancake batter is so thick after the resting period that it won't spread on the griddle, add just a tablespoon of water to loosen it up.

Other Ways To Make Sure Your Homemade Pancakes Are Fluffy and Light

Beyond the resting period, there are a few keys to better pancakes that every cook should know. Remember these the next time you're ready to flip a batch for breakfast:

• Spoon, don't scoop. If you're using a baking mix or scooping flour for a homemade batter, make sure you spoon the flour or mix into a measuring cup instead of scooping. When you press a measuring cup through flour or a dry mix, you compress it into the cup, which means you'll get significantly more mix than intended. But if you spoon it, the flour will be layered perfectly, which will result in the ratio of dry to wet ingredients the recipe intends.
• Don't worry about lumps. If you are one who's prone to mixing batter to break up lumps, stop. Some lumps are good in pancake batter. Note that we said some. You do actually want to mix the batter and make sure you don't have flour at the bottom of the bowl. Too much mixing will overstimulate the batter and gluten production, which can create tough, leathery pancakes. If you let the batter sit, the lumps will mostly disappear as the flour absorbs the liquid.
• Leave the pancake alone. Once you pour the batter onto a griddle or skillet, leave the pancakes alone until it's time to flip them or take them off the heat. Pressing the pancakes into the pan won't cook them more quickly, and it won't get you crispier edges. You're just smashing out that air you worked so hard to create.