Gingerbread Pancakes (á la La Note)

Been working on pancake skills lately. Baking (and anything like it) are tough to practice, one of the side-effects being that you either have to throw out a lot of food or eat a lot of calories for one experiment. The guilt throws the scientific process way off.

I decided to try gingerbread pancakes, since I had bought some pears and did some poaching. La Note in Berkeley serves terrific gingerbread pancakes with poached pears. In additions, the poaching liquid can be reduced into a delicious pear-ginger syrup. For my base pancake recipe I used this one:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/GINGERBREAD-PANCAKES-108785

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup brewed coffee, cold or at room temperature
4 large eggs
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

I made a couple changes right out of the gate: 2 of the 3 cups of flour were whole wheat, not APF. I substituted 1 cup of real buttermilk for the coffee and water. Didn't have any coffee, plus buttermilk is delicious and almost certainly will be acidic enough to match the coffee. Finally, I used sunflower oil (my standard vegetable oil) in place of the butter.

I actually assembled the dry and wet ingredients the night before so that I could just mix and cook in the morning. I hope there is nothing wrong with leaving the eggs in buttermilk and lemon juice overnight.

When it came to mixing, I tried to adhere to standard practice of mixing as little as possible, but was foiled by the unexpected thickness of the batter. After a few mix-rounds I could see it was WAY to dry. I decided to bite the bullet and add milk until it looked right. Not sure how much I added, but it took more mixing than I would have liked to get it integrated. Then, once it had sit for a bit (volume increasing substantially from the gas formation) it was still a bit thick, so I added more milk and mixed again, which released quite a bit of gas. I was afraid what with the de-gassing and the over-mixing that I'd be screwed, but they were still quite cakey and soft.

There was one additional dynamic, and that was the thickness of the batter varied from top to bottom of the pitcher. In other words, the first pancakes were much thicker than the last. I like the variability, but it can be confusing when trying to get the consistency right at the outset. The only alternative would seem to be mix it before each pour, but I would think that would be a gluten no-no.

The amount of sugar in the batter means that these brown WAY faster than typical pancakes, so one has to be cautious. I turned down my griddle from 375º to 350º to even things out. All told, it seemed like 3 mins on side A, 2 mins on side B was about right.

Seems to me it is almost impossible to serve home pancakes hot off the griddle, unless you are literally doing them right off the griddle onto people's plates, server-style. When I do pancakes, I cook them all at once, choose the best eight or so for immediate serving, then freeze the rest right away. I want them to retain as much moisture in as possible. Then I put the chosen eight into the toaster over briefly before serving, just so the butter will melt.

Jacki and I were pretty happy with the end results. Next time I plan to make the following changes: (1) Reduce the sugar by at least half. (2) Double the spices. (3) Add the correct amount of liquid right from the start. Not sure how much milk I added. Could have easily been a cup. Will refer to other pancake recipes I like to figure out what the approximate flour/fluid ratio is.