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There are many, many different kinds of breakfast foods out there that people know and love and come to expect when it is time for Sunday brunches. Some people appreciate the simplicity of some oatmeal and a slice of toast, while other people might be more focused on baking themselves the perfect breakfast.
No matter which type of breakfast is your favorite, there may come a time when you need to make pancakes and you may not have a good idea on what you should do for the batter.
Unlike some other kinds of popular breakfast food, pancakes need to have a bit more preparation to get them ready to be served than other foods do. For one, you have to make sure that the batter is the right consistency and that it also has all of the ingredients that you want it to have, as pancake batter often needs to sit out for it to work.
With as many people all around the world who take an interest in pancakes as there are, one would think that knowing how to make the right kind of pancake batter would be common knowledge.
However, you might be surprised to realize that many people still rely on pre-made mixes to get their pancakes to be just right. While it may be easier for some people in the moment, there are plenty of reasons why you should consider making your own pancake batter.
One of the biggest reasons why you should try to make your own pancake batter is because you will be able to have full control over all aspects of the pancake. Not only will you be able to decide on the flavor of the pancake, but you can also choose the consistency of the batter and any other additions you might want to include.
Because of how many things there are that you can do to pancake batter, you will always want to make sure that you have the basics well understood first before you can dive into the world of pancake batters. You should have a good idea on how to keep your pancake batter from being runny, liquidy, and not wanting to rise.
Thankfully, making sure that your pancake is the consistency that you need it to be is an extremely easy task to handle. You simply need to have a firm understanding of what ingredients will go into most standard pancake batters.
Making Sure You Understand the Problem
There are plenty of reasons why you may not want to have runny pancake batter as the batter for your breakfast treats. The runnier batters can often result in thin pancakes that do not have the kind of fluffy texture that you are looking for.
When looking at ways that you can properly thicken the pancake batter, you will always want to factor in the price of your investment, as some types of thickening agents are hard to come across, meaning that they can become very expensive, very fast.
More often than not, a runny batter is going to be caused by the fact that there are too many wet ingredients in the batter, and that those wet ingredients are not thick enough to be used as proper pancake batter.
Stirring your batter to perfection is a delicate art that involves balancing undermixing and overmixing, and it is something that will often take a fair amount of practice to understand and to be able to do well.
Overmixing your pancake dough will overdevelop the gluten inside of it, turning your batter from a batter-like consistency to the consistency and elasticity of pizza dough.
Instead, when you get around to thickening your pancake batter, you are going to want to do so somewhat slowly so that everything has a chance to be absorbed without causing more issues for you in the process.
When all is said and done, the most common causes of a runny batter are going to be an improper mixture of ingredients, specifically the combination of wet and dry ingredients, and you are simply going to need to have a good understanding of how much you should be stirring pancake batter so that it doesn’t turn into the equivalent of pizza dough.
Can the Problem Be Fixed?
Now that you have a good understanding of what is going on inside of your pancake batter, you can now focus your attention toward thickening up the batter for your pancakes.
Unfortunately, thickening pancake batter is not always as simple as adding a pinch of flour and then stirring the same way you would thicken traditional soups. Rather than the simple methods, you are going to have to have a fair amount of finesse to ensure that the texture is just right.
The first steps to fixing the problem of your pancake batter being too runny are going to be to get the materials for the job. You are going to need a sifter and a tablespoon. You are going to measure out approximately one tablespoon of the flour of your choice, which will be your main thickening agent for this process.
You are then going to want to use the sifter to slowly but evenly work the flour into the pancake batter. If all goes well, the batter should quickly begin to thicken, leaving you with the perfect batch of pancakes.
If you are new to the world of making pancakes, you may not know what to expect in terms of thickness for the batter. Your pancake batter does not have to be the smoothest surface that you can find, as having several lumps in the batter is not uncommon, but it is something to be aware of.
Usually, when you are working with pancakes, a good batter is going to be thick enough that it only drips off a spoon, rather than sliding down the spoon completely.
You should also make sure that your ingredients are not the source of the problem. An example of this is how many people will use baking powder to assist with adding body and volume to the pancake without significantly altering its flavor.
Unfortunately, baking powder, while it may not rot as many things do when they reach expiry, the taste will change drastically. One reason why your batter might be runny is because your pancake batter has stale baking powder in it.
Always read the expiration and best-by dates on food, especially when you are working it in as an ingredient for other food. This can prevent issues such as having a runny pancake batter because of a stale ingredient.
Thickening the Pancake Batter
There are a few different ways that you can go about fixing this kind of problem with the pancake batter.
One thing that you will want to be aware of is that some of these solutions are going to take more time than others, and if you are in a situation where you are pressed for time, it may be easier to simply try and redo the pancakes rather than troubleshoot.
The first and most common reason why people tend to have a runny pancake batter is because there aren’t enough dry ingredients in the recipe for the batter to handle. Understandably, the best way for you to handle this kind of problem is to introduce some dry ingredients into the batter so that you can try and get the thickness of that batter up.
The two most used ingredients that people will rely on to help thicken the batter are going to be some flour and occasionally some butter.
Flour is a classic thickening agent ingredient, and butter can actually help the flour spread to most of the batter in question. This is going to be the easiest way, by far, to get around some of the problems with pancake batter.
Additionally, you should try and make sure that you do not overmix your pancake batter. If you end up overmixing the pancake batter, all of the dry ingredients are going to begin mixing together and combining.
This creates problems as then, when you are ready to add the liquid ingredients, the dry ingredients will have already mixed together, meaning that you will likely have to redo the pancake batter.
At the end of the day, there are many different aspects that you are going to have to pay attention to if you want to make sure that your pancake batter turns out as the best it can be.
You will want to make sure that you are always adding the right amount of dry ingredients to the mix and that you are not overmixing the lumps in the pancake batter away, as those are needed to create the tasty breakfast that everyone knows and loves.
Thankfully, runny pancake batter is one of the easiest problems with baking that one can fix, and it is something that just about everyone will come across at one point or another.
Before you know it, when you make sure to be careful about your brand-new pancake mix, you will have some of the thickest pancake mix that you can work with, leading to tasty and fluffy pancakes that friends and family alike can appreciate.
Sarah Bridenstine
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.
