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I am making crêpes and I wonder why they take such a ridiculously long amount of time to cook, about 5 or 6 minutes per pancake. I remember once upon a time I was making crêpes cooking them about 90 seconds on one side, and than 30-60 seconds on the other side, and they where ready. Now, after 3 minutes of cooking on one side, they are hardly separable from the pan, and it takes at least 5 minutes in total to make them eatable.

I tried both on medium and maximum flame. I am now doing it on a propane-butane portable stove in a van, but the maximum flame on the stove doesn't differ visually in size from a maximum flame in a brick-house stove. When I was doing them some years ago it was in a brick house on methane gas.

I do it on a simple thin Teflon-coated pancake pan.

I also don't use any eggs, and I am trying different mixtures of flour, usually about 85% of wheat flour, and the rest either: corn flour, rice flour or powdered milk. And 900 ml water per 400 grams flour mixture.

But even when I tried making them once with 900 ml milk plus 400 grams wheat flour, they also took a long time to make.

Is it because of the lack of eggs, the heat is too low, the pan is bad or something else?

What to do to cook pancakes at a rate of 1 pancake per 2 minutes again? On propane-butane without using eggs. Preferably only using grain products and water.

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    have you tried any of the answers to your other question: cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8503/…? Right now your recipe is tortilla-like, and the cooking time is similar to what I've seen for tortillas on the stove.
    – justkt
    Nov 2, 2010 at 19:13
  • Yes, I tried with powdered milk right today (no corn flour), and it was still very long. That was 350 grams wheat flour + 50 grams powdered milk + 1 liter of water. Took 5-6 minutes per crêpe not to feel raw, and the crêpes where too crispy afterward, I like them soft to roll them nicely.
    – ria
    Nov 2, 2010 at 19:38
  • the eggs contribute to the softness by adding fat. You can potentially get away with shortening/lard/butter/oil, but at some point if you want softness you're going to need to add fat.
    – justkt
    Nov 2, 2010 at 19:56

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If it doesn't contain eggs, or at least something that serves as a substitute for eggs, it's not a crepe. Crepes cook quickly because eggs need very little time/heat to set up. Like justkt said, what you've described is a tortilla. I'm not exactly sure how or why a tortilla "sets up" (if you can even use that term for a flatbread), but it's a completely different mechanism than cooking eggs, and takes a much longer time.

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Those are not crèpes but rather a sort of flatbread. To make it set, you need to boil most of the water in the milk out. This is what is taking a long time. This is also why they are kind of hard when they are done: it is more or less like a bread crust.

If you had a binder like eggs, then it would a crèpe and it would set more rapidly because the eggs take very little time to coagulate and hold the whole thing together.

To make flatbread set faster, there is little you can do beyond making it very thin (and thus a bit fluid when at the batter stage).

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I think it's on the pan. Why not replace it, or why not try using electric crepe makers? I do have this recipe here that I've been using for months, and I got an average of 1 crepe for 1 and a half minutes time! Check it out.

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Make a fluider, so it would be thinner.

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  • Can you elaborate what is a "fluider"? Or maybe you meant "Make it fluider"? It was already very fluid, I think even a bit too fluid, it even had too many tiny holes.
    – ria
    Nov 2, 2010 at 21:43
  • @nerkn - if you read through the description, you'll see that this isn't a standard crepe recipe. It's significantly different, which means it will cook up differently.
    – justkt
    Nov 2, 2010 at 22:17

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