The Pancake Handbook
Long ago, I was one of the founding cooks at Berkeley’s beloved Bette’s Oceanview Diner. When we started selling a line of pancake mixes in the early ’90s, we decided to offer a little booklet of recipes on the side panel of each package. Before we knew it, that idea turned into a full-fledged book.
Along with diner co-owners Bette Kroening and Sue Conley (later of Cowgirl Creamery fame) I wrote the text and developed many of the recipes, and we self-published The Pancake Handbook as a charming spiral-bound paperback.
A few years later, Ten Speed Press discovered the book and we worked with them to create a fully revised second edition. And after a decade of steady sales, we did a newly designed and reworked third edition, which is still selling like hotcakes, and was even translated into French (as the delightfully bizarre sounding Le Manuel des Crêpes!). Of all the books I’ve worked on, this one, my first ever, is still my favorite.
Roles: Coauthor, writer
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Authors: Steve Siegelman, Bette Kroening, Sue Conley
“The most tempting, comforting compilation of pancake recipes I’ve found.”
— Karola Saekel, San Francisco Chronicle
“The best advice on technique I’ve ever read.”
— S. Irene Virbilla, San Francisco Focus Magazine
Writing sample
Pancakes Past and Present
We pancake lovers like to think that the discovery of the pancake actually marked the very beginning of cooking. You see, pancakes date back to prehistory—probably even before the domestication of fire—when people first learned to mash grain and water together and bake the resulting dough on a hot rock in the sunshine. This was no mere gathering of food and cramming it into a hungry mouth. This was preparing and mixing ingredients, applying heat over time to effect chemical change, and winding up with an edible product that had never existed before. It was a great moment in anthropological and culinary history . . . and pancakes were there!
A Pancake by Any Other Name
Shakespeare himself recognized the appeal of a good pancake feed. Just listen to this irresistible invitation from Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (Act 2, Scene 1):
We’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo’er puddings and flap-jacks, and thou shalt be welcome.
To which we reply, “If flap-jacks be the food of love, flip on.”
There is evidence that pancakes were central to nearly all ancient cultures from Egypt, Greece, and Rome to Africa and China. It’s easy to imagine how those first unleavened breads were prized over other foods. It is believed that they held symbolic meaning to early sun worshipers because of their round shape and sustaining warmth.
Today, pancakes remain one of the few foods universal to all cuisines, an Esperanto of the epicurean world. The term pancake has come to mean a flat “quick bread,” browned on both sides on a griddle. Basic pancake batter is made from flour and water or milk, maybe egg, maybe leavening, maybe sugar, honey or molasses, and maybe fat.
In America, pancake generally refers to the classic white-flour kind, often made with buttermilk. But this was not always so. The original American pancake was made from ground cornmeal by native Americans, who called it nokehick. It was introduced to European settlers in the early 1600s, and its name was eventually corrupted into English as “no cake.” (Imagine the confusion that might have been caused by a sign on the window of a roadside tavern at the time: “Yes, we have no cakes!”)
In the 1700s, the Dutch added buckwheat pannekoeken to the American menu, and the British introduced the tradition of pancake feasts, held on Shrove Tuesday as a final binge before the deprivation of Lent. (Pre-Lenten pancake feasts and celebrations, which range from pancake-eating contests and flipping races to elaborate cooking competitions, live on in many parts of the world. The Sunday morning pancake breakfasts popular in churches throughout America are direct descendants of this tradition.)
By the 1800s, Americans had progressed from no cakes to hoecakes—thick cornmeal cakes so named because they were cooked on the blade of a hoe over an open fire by field laborers—and rice cakes made from milled rice flour. From Rhode Island came delicate cornmeal johnnycakes. Miners and lumberjacks in the Northwest favored sourdough pancakes made from a “wild” yeast starter. When provisions were in short supply, they invented thick and hearty flannel cakes—more colorfully known as “sweat pads”—made from stale bread soaked in milk.
With the current interest in regional American cooking, people are rediscovering all kinds of wonderful recipes and variations drawn from our collective pancake past. We’ve included several in this book. Many are made with a variety of healthful and tasty whole grains, along with a handful of basic ingredients you probably already have on hand. We hope you have fun trying them, and that they inspire you to create a few pancake traditions of your own.