Martha’s pancake recipe is one of the longest-standing staples of my repertoire. I wholeheartedly recommend it – especially to someone who feels indifferent about pancakes.

This recipe is written for a skillet. To make these pancakes on a nonstick griddle, click here.

Martha Stewart’s Best Buttermilk Pancakes

Recipe by Make It Like a Man!Course: Breakfast

Makes

14

6-inch pancakes

Serves

7

Even people who are indifferent to pancakes will rave about these.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (or 4.5 oz. cake flour + 5.5 oz. bread flour)

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1 tsp baking soda

• ½ tsp salt

• 3 Tbs sugar

• 5 Tbs unsalted butter, divided

• 3 cups buttermilk

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (optional)

Directions

• Set a skillet over lowest heat (see notes). Whisk the flour, powder, soda, salt, and sugar in a medium-sized mixing bowl; set aside.
• Melt 4 Tablespoons of the butter in a microwave, less than 1 minute on full power; set aside. Use a 2-cup measure to pour 2 cups of the buttermilk into the flour mixture; don’t stir. Add the remaining 1 cup of buttermilk to the 2-cup measure. Pour the butter into it; stir. Add the eggs and stir briskly to blend them into the mixture. Pour this into the flour mixture. Whisk just until well blended. Do not over-stir; the batter should have lumps. Let the batter rest for 2 minutes, while you raise the heat under the pan to medium/medium-high.
• Add remaining Tablespoon of butter to the pan (see notes). Once it’s melted, use a 1/3-cup measuring cup to scoop the batter into the pan. (Distribute a few blueberries over the pancake, to your liking.) Once the edges of the pancake are set, and the bubbles popping at the surface begin to leave craters, flip the pancake. (This should take 1½ minutes. If it doesn’t, adjust the heat accordingly.) Cook for another 1½ minutes. Move the pancake to a plate, or keep warm in a very low oven.

Notes

• Although I usually use 1/3-cup batter per cake, 1/2 cup makes a beautiful cake as well.
• Two six-inch pancakes constitute a single, satisfying serving, in my opinion. If you have more, you’re having seconds. Or thirds. Or more.
• A nonstick surface is essential for pancakes. I usually use a 12-inch, cast-iron skillet. Sometimes, I use a nonstick, electric griddle. Both work perfectly. Cast iron needs just the slightest bit of lubrication (butter) before the first pancake, and after that no additional butter is needed for the any subsequent cakes. (If you do find that you need additional butter between cakes, you pan is not as well seasoned as it should be.) A nonstick surface needs no lubrication; skip the butter. Some nonstick pans shouldn’t be preheated; consult manufacturer’s instructions. A cast-iron pan absolutely requires an overly-generous amount of preheating! I don’t mean to turn up the flame. I mean to keep the flame low, but for a good, long time. That’s why I start this recipe with preheating my pan. I want that thing over a low flame for a good ten minutes if not more. Although I’ve certainly not tested every type of pan, my impression is that pancakes won’t cook properly in a pan that isn’t already at (or pretty damn close to) the perfect temperature when the batter hits it.
• The container that you used to melt the butter might make an excellent resting place for your 1/3-cup measure in between batches of pancakes.
• Once you hit your stride, you’ll know exactly when a pancake is ready to flip. For the first one, test the waters by taking care when sliding the flipper under the cake. If the cake doesn’t want to lift cleanly, or seems to wrinkle up as you try to slide the flipper under it, it needs longer to cook. A properly cooked pancake is easy to flip.
• A pancake flipper that is as wide – or nearly so – as the pancake, will make flipping a breeze. It’s worth seeking one out.

For the original version of this recipe, visit Martha.

The backstory

This is among my most-viewed posts – not due to any merit of my own, but probably due to the fact that I used Martha’s name in the post title.

It’s so fashionable to hate on Martha. But here’s the thing: she’s really good at what she does. Let’s face it, she was even good at prison. Remember Blagojevich blithering on about his predicament on the way to the slammer? Did he come out on the other side with a miraculous new way to fold a t-shirt? No. He got a shameful Trump pardon. Will he emerge as a cultural icon who probably smokes weed with Snoop Dog? I doubt it. I hope he never appears in public, ever again.

Think what you will of Martha, the proof of what she does is in these goddamned pancakes. They’re heaven on a plate. I’ve served them to people who were completely unexcited to have to eat pancakes, and they’ve raved. They’re fluffy without becoming gummy or pasty as you eat them. They hold syrup without becoming soggy. They’re filling without being too heavy. They smell and taste defuckinglicious. They’re absolutely fantastic.

Social Learning:

Over years, I’ve come to think that the heat should be high enough that the pancake cooks in 1½ minutes per side. Two minutes per side, over a lower heat – which was my former standard – obviously works, too … but I think you get a fluffier pancake over higher heat. This is a matter of experience. As you work your way through the batter, adjust the flame until you get exactly the color you want, in 1½-to-2 minutes. (Don’t try to go shorter, or your cake won’t cook through.) Even once you’ve nailed it, you may have to on occasion adjust the heat as you go, if the cakes start getting too dark, or too light. Eventually, you’ll hit on the right combination of pan, time, and temperature, and then you’ll have perfect pancakes for the rest of your life.

This makes a good reason to use a griddle: I can make only one pancake at a time in a 10-inch skillet. I don’t mind that. I usually just serve them up as they come out of the pan, to hungry little baby birds with their beaks wide open. If you want to serve them all at once, and you have no griddle, you can keep them warm in the oven. I like to think that keeping them on racks is better than stacking them on a plate, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. I keep doing it, though. Go figure. In any case, here’s the thing: fresh out of the pan, the cake is as good as it’s going to be. It’s light, fluffy, and it has this ever-so-delicate crispness to the exterior. In a pefect world, it should be consumed immediately. Within as few as two minutes, it will loose that crispness. In every other way it will still be the best pancake you’ve ever had, but ah, that elusive, subtly crisp exterior. Yes, that’s the esoteric world in which I live: I want that cake out of the pan and onto a warm plate, soft butter, jam, and syrup at the ready, so that I can finish eating it within two minutes of it having been cooked. Bacon on the side, of course. And black coffee. Does that even need to be said?

I wake up in the mood for pancakes far more often than I happen to have three cups of buttermilk. So I’ve learned a few tricks.

1. If I have to buy buttermilk for a recipe I’m following, I’ll buy extra, so that I have the three cups I need for these pancakes.
2. This recipe is pretty flexible. First, though, you have to follow it with the buttermilk a few times. You need to memorize the consistency of buttermilk, as well as the consistency of the resultant batter. Once you have, you can use all sorts of dairy products to recreate them. I’ve diluted sour cream and/or yogurt with whole or 2% milk until it reached the consistency of buttermilk. I’ve used that in place of the buttermilk, or to make up the difference when I’m short on buttermilk. I’ve also diluted heavy cream with water. The pancakes don’t look right, but they taste great. I’ve even puréed cottage cheese and diluted it with milk, which produced incredibly wonderful pancakes. In all of these cases, I always add the liquid to the dry ingredients a bit at a time, to make sure that I’ve achieved the correct consistency in the batter. If the batter winds up too thin, you’ll wind up with something more like a crepe. If you start adding flour to compensate, you’re going to wander far enough away from the recipe that you may never find your way back.
3. This third trick has nothing to do with buttermilk. I’ve taken a piece of Tupperware that holds about three cups and I’ve designated it my pancake box. Immediately after making pancakes, I fill the box with all the required dry ingredients and put it in the pantry. With a sharpie, I’ve written all the wet ingredients and their amounts right on the box. (I stifled the urge to use calligraphy or a stencil.) Not only does it enable my I-woke-up-on-Saturday-morning-craving-pancakes impulse, but I can take it with me for the weekend at my place in South Hampton.

There are other great ways to use up buttermilk, if you happen to have it around and aren’t in a pancake mood. (My cousins drink it straight up. That freaks me out.) Buttermilk sorbet is amazing, even if you’re a buttermilk hater. And, of course, salad dressing.

I love these pancakes left over. I stack the leftovers on a salad plate, let them cool comletely, wrap them in plastic, and keep them in the fridge, where they will eventually stick together, which is unfortunate … but not so unfortunate that I won’t pry then apart and reheat them for a quick breakfast.

Martha Stewart’s Best Buttermilk Pancakes