Pancakes: Avoiding the "spider batch"

Question

This recent HNQ question on pancakes sticking got me wondering if the good people here might be able to help me solve the biggest culinary mystery of my life.

I've been cooking pancakes for over 50 years now. For a while when the kids were young (and thus didn't sleep late that day), I used to do it every Saturday morning. That's several thousand pancakes. So I got pretty good at it, or at least very well-practiced. I've solved a lot of pancake-related issues through sheer dumb random experimentation.

However, the first batch is still always problematic. Rather than cooking in a nice even pattern, when I flip the first batch, it has always been browned in an odd spiderweb pattern, with what looks almost like bubbles of lighter-browned surface area separated by the browned bits.

My kids (funny how kids in a house develop their own culture) grew to call this first batch "the spider batch", and they all refuse to eat it. This means its always the one I am forced to eat (or throw out). Later batches are never like this, being evenly browned. The "spider batch" also has what I'd call a slightly crusty texture that later batches don't.

Here's a picture of a plate 3 three completed batches. Typical first batch shown at the top (12:00) of the plate.

This shot shows the "spidering" extended a bit into the edges of the later batches, but the spider batch is still instantly recognizable.

My method I use is a Calpalhon griddle straddling 2 electric burners, with the big one set on 5(of 10) and the small one on 7. That keeps the whole griddle relatively evenly heated. I pour my pancakes out to about 3.5" in diameter, as I like that size, and it allows me to make batches of 6 on my griddle.

I've come to lightly spray the griddle with pan-coat beforehand, and use a paper towel to even it out and dab up any excess. If I don't apply the pan-coat, I often have a lot of trouble with the pancakes sticking and tearing up (but still have a spider-batch issue). If I don't dab it up, the spider batch is much worse, and in extreme cases extends to the second batch.

I also allow the griddle to pre-heat for at least 5 minutes, as that seems to help reduce spidering, but it doesn't eliminate it either.

I tried looking this up online, and found this thread on the topic on r/Cooking. The advice there seems to be to do exactly what I'm doing with the oil and the paper towel. Its cool that I hit on the same technique everyone there has, but my problem is it doesn't really fix the issue. It alleviates it, but doesn't fix it. The only fix I've ever found is to throw away the 1st batch. Seems like there ought to be a better fix.

So the question is, what on earth is causing this spidering, and is there anything I can do to stop it? Or is my current MO of "plan to throw the first batch away" as good as I can get?

Answer 1

As far as I know, there is no way to control pan heat such that both the first pancake and the subsequent pancakes turn out good. And the culprit is indeed the heat: for any given batter recipe, the differences in crust color and texture come from the speed at which the contact surface of the pancake to the pan (or to the oil puddle) heats up.

I cannot explain the physics behind it, but it seems that the pan only reaches some kind of equilibrium heating rate after it has fried a pancake. Before that first pancake, it's heating differently.

So you're basically left with the choice between having a bad first pancake and good later ones, or having a good first pancake and bad later ones. The typical choice is to sacrifice the first pancake, so the majority of the batch will be good.

Answer 2

Going purely on my own intuition and speculation, I suspect the issue is that the pan is preheating unevenly due to the distribution of the heating elements under the skillet. Why this only affects the first batch could be either because the addition of the pancake batter as a heating material on top of the skillet helps distribute the heat or because having said material for the direct heat to escape into allows the rest of the skillet to finish preheating without risking scorching the parts over the heating elements.

In either case, my suggestion would be to try putting something on the skillet as it's preheating such as a grill press or cast iron pan. Alternatively, you could always cook something else before the pancakes (such as eggs or bacon) that wouldn't be as affected by the so-called "spider batch".

Answer 3

I've never been able to fully stop the spider pancake phenomenon, however I've found that wiping oil on the pan using a paper towel before heating the pan helps reduce it. I'm not sure why it works, I suspect because it's a very thin coating.

Answer 4

This is more a suggestion than an answer, but too much for a comment: You could try to "emulate" whatever the first pancake does (certainly some kind of cooling) by other means, e.g. by some small amount of water applied with a brush or such, or by briefly (and carefully, perhaps on a paper towel) putting a flat-bottomed pot or small frying pan on the griddle.

Answer 5

Here are three hypotheses. My money is on #1.

Hypothesis 1: oil pooling

Based on the pattern, I suspect that the oil may be (imperceptably) pooling. If you add so much oil to a pan that you can see it pooling, it will happen in just this spidery pattern.

This means that when the batter hits the griddle, certain parts get hit with the oil and fry, cooking quickly. The other parts are lifted a microscopic bit above the surface of the griddle and so don't cook as quickly. The frying hardens/crisps the batter making the pancakes dryer and more tough, which explains why the kids didn't like them as much.

After the first batch, the excess oil has been absorbed into the fried pancake and the remaining oil has spread out and been absorbed into the pores of the griddle.

When cooking pancakes with a skillet I usually tip out the excess oil into a cup to get a nice smooth cover (allowing me to reuse it when the pan dries out). This is probably not enough to prevent a spider batch, but you can follow that up with a thorough wipedown with a paper towel (when the griddle is already hot). That should give you a good covering.

You note that this helps, so this sort of confirms this hypothesis. Wiping down the griddle when it is already hot may be the missing piece of the puzzle, since oild tends to pool as it is heated and the viscosity changes. Wiping the griddle when it's hot coats it with the oil in its hot state.

Hypothesis 2: pancake coating the griddle

Perhaps the perfect griddle coating comes in part from the batter. Most pancake batter has plenty of fat in it (milk, eggs, sometimes butter), and as the first batter hits the griddle there are lots of violent reactions happening. Perhaps some of these processes, or some of the animal fats from the pancakes cause the griddle to be coated better.

I can't think of a way to test this exhaustively. One thing to test is whether you get more or less of a spider batch with butter than with oil. If butter has less spidering, then a small amount of animal fat may help the vegetable oild to cover the griddle better.

Hypothesis 3: uneven gluten network

Batters have weak gluten networks due to the high moisture. If there is any unevenness in the strength of the gluten, the stronger parts will trap more air, and rise to the top. This suggests that even if you let the batter sit long enough to let the bubbles escape, you still might get stronger gluten, and therefore tougher pancakes at the top of the batter. The spider pattern may be explained by the pancake rising a bit like a loaf of bread and lifting certain parts of the pancake away from the surface of the griddle.

This one can be easily tested by using a ladle and taking batter from the bottom of the bowl to make the first batch.

Answer 6

If the problem is that pancakes are wasted, then just serve up the "spider" pancakes first, and refuse to serve the later ones until the first ones are eaten.

Surely a moist topping is more than enough to make them palatable.