Here are ten simple facts about pancakes, as part of a series of posts we are writing on the “Art of Breakfast”.
Background
Surely, since breakfast is one of the main reasons you go to a Bed and Breakfast, we need to say something about it. We have a couple of different articles on this important topic.
How to Set Up a Breakfast Room
Simple Facts about Pancakes #1 People prefer pancakes over bacon (In Milwaukee)
According to this survey, pancakes are more popular than bacon as a breakfast food. Also there is now such a thing as “second breakfast” because people tend to rush through “first breakfast” so that they can get out the door. When they starve out at about 10:30 AM they have to forage for food.
https://www.studyfinds.org/most-americans-feel-second-breakfast-should-be-official-meal/
If you were in the bread business, that would be important information. Also, I suppose if you were in the bacon business.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #2 Pancakes are Ancient
According to Kate, writer of Kate’s Food Blog, pancakes were found in the cold, frozen stomach of Otzi the Iceman who fell into a glacier 8000 years ago and whose body was preserved. That raises a lot of questions about Otzi. Did the carb rush he got that morning distract him enough so that he slipped off the glacier? Did he make his own or did his mom make them? What kind of pancake would be recognizeable 8000 years from now if the same thing happened to us?
Simple Facts about Pancakes #3: They Require some Ability
The lack of ability to make pancakes was a running joke on Green Acres. Millenials note: This was a TV show from the stone age of TV. The running joke was city people who got the idea to move out into the country.
The above video features Bea Benedaret, who was also Jethro’s mom (Cousin Pearl) from the Beverly Hillbillies, Kate, the proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel (from Petticoat Junction) and provided the voice for Betty Rubble on the Flintstones.
You will apparently have to be a baby boomer to know or care about any of those things.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #4: Pancakes are not terrible for you (although they do have a lot of carbs)
Here’s the carb chart for a cup of Hungry Jack pancake mix. There are a couple of things on this: This is the calorie chart:
First of all, this is for one cup of the dry mix. You usually mix the dry mix with about 2/3 cup of water, and no one eats a bowl full of pancakes.
So assuming you only ate half of a bowl full of pancakes, you would only be getting 225 calories for breakfast, which is not really all that high.
If you add a slice of butter (102 calories) and 2 tablespoons of maple syrup (another 104 calories) you’re still under 500 calories for the morning.
Of course, whether it is healthy or not depends a lot on what you do afterward.
If you go out and sit in the office this type of breakfast will probably not be good for you. If you go out and try to walk across a glacier, and/or hack out 36 feet of concrete (like we did the other day) this probably won’t hurt you.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #5: There is an International House of them.
https://www.ihop.com/en/about-ihop/history
Ah, this company was founded in 1958, which was at the beginning of the interstate highway system. This company brought two things to the world. First of all, standardization. Back in the stone age of the greasy spoon roadside diner, you never knew exactly what you were going to get when you ordered pancakes.
So thanks to this company you knew what you were going to get. Standardized mediocre pancakes.
As you know at the Firefly, friendly Bed and Breakfast near Madison GA, we have a hard time standardizing anything.
Secondly, because a lot of these places were open 24 hours, you could wander into one of them after “closing time.” In some places, this is considered an important part of a college education.
This would do two things: One is give you a greasy stomach settling meal before bedtime, and another is expose you to the kind of workforce that you did not want to be in, i.e. night wait person in the IHOP.
Not that this is not a respectable position in life, but it is slightly more desirable and pays better if you pay attention in calculus.
Revisionist Thinking
Do you remember a few years ago when they tried to change the name of this place to International House of Breakfast?
The negative reaction was so overwhelming that it became one of those “brilliant marketing ideas that backfired but in the end finally succeeded.”
Simple Facts about Pancakes #6: People still like them.
According to this article in Food Manufacturing dot com, 60% of households still use packaged pancake mix, presumably to mix pancakes. This is despite the various trends toward gluten free, low carb, and generally highly portable food that you can cram into your life as you sit behind the wheel of your Hyundai.
This is interestingly high, because depending on your point of view slowing down to make pancakes could be considered a “pain point”. A pain point is an incremental complication that could clog your day.
So, there may be some underlying value in the warm, friendly, round shape of warm cooked flour and water looking up at you in the morning.
At the Firefly, bed and breakfast near Madison GA, Pancakes are not considered painful. We’re trying to do away with Pain Points.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #7: Scratch is not really much better than the Mix from the Box
Okay, there may be some disagreement on this topic.
The question comes up: Are pancakes best prepared from scratch, or from a box mix? In this test, kids and gentlemen in a hurry were indifferent. Foodies could tell the difference, as could little old ladies.
I suppose all of this is dependent on how much syrup and butter you put on them.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/whats-in-your-pancake-mix_n_57a0cd35e4b08a8e8b5f9905
In this article, the argument was made that in addition to the normal enriched flour, you also get a dose of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, a.a “trans fat”.
So possibly nutritionally it makes some sense to limit your consumption of this.
It also makes a difference how often you eat pancakes. Example: If you ate nothing but pancakes all the time, it might make a difference to you. Eating them once in a blue moon, whenever you stop off at some pleasant B&B, it is probably not noticeable compared to the rest of the places you’re getting it.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #8: It’s all about the toppings
Okay, is it not true, in your heart of hearts, that pancakes are all about the toppings?
Do you really want to carry one of these things around in a baggie to snack on all day?
Maybe pancakes are really all about the nice warm feeling and bright colors of the sweet and syrupy toppings that you put on them, and not about the pancakes themselves.
This is worthy of an experiment: Take some pancakes and plop them down in front of someone without any toppings.
Then take a cupful of toppings and plop that down in front of someone.
Then, take both the pancakes and toppings and plop that down in front of them.
Seems like the pancakes, as a delivery device for something nice, would be favored as a preference.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #9: Pancakes vs. Waffles
According to this survey of Twitter Users, there is a 2:1 preference for waffles, among this not widespread demographic.
Waffles vs. Pancakes (Video Link)
And, this is apparently a matter for significant debate.
The most commonly given advantages of waffles over pancakes are the little pattern, which hold more syrup and butter.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryankincaid/stacks-on-stacks
There is also apparently a big disagreement and a school of thought that favors pancakes.
This would be a good survey to give to our readers. If you have a preference of one or the other please feel free to comment on this blog post.
Simple Facts about Pancakes #10: The Firefly Pancake Recipe:
1 Cup Almond Flour
1 Cup Coconut Flour
1/4 cup Erythrytol
4 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups Flax or Almond Milk
1/4 cup Butter (from Farmview Market, melted)
2 teaspoon Vanilla
1 large egg (preferably recently laid by a chicken that has foraged for food around the farm.
Combine in a mixing bowl while making small talk in a large country kitchen. Drop into funny shapes onto an electric griddle. The griddle lube shall be butter.
Thought question: Does it matter if you are cooking this on an electric griddle vs. cast iron or something earth-friendly? According to the Earth Goddess, the electric griddle is favored for quantity, but the cast iron gives you crispy edges.
Also a thinner version can be made for crepes and a thicker version for bread.
Serving suggestion: Top off with a mastodon steak. The Earth Goddess has not offered a suggestion on who is going to kill the mastodon.
