The Best Fluffy Pancakes Recipe

These are the fluffiest pancakes I have ever made, and I have made a lot of pancakes. Tall, golden, crisp at the edges, and so tender in the middle that syrup is almost optional. My boys ask for them on Saturdays now and I have stopped pretending I mind. From scratch, on the table in half an hour.

Do not forget to check out my Chefs Tips and Wine Pairings sections below!

Pancakes: A little history (you aren’t going to believe this!)

Ötzi the Iceman died in the Alps about 5,300 years ago and hikers found him in 1991 with his last meal still in his stomach. (Yes, this is about pancakes!!) Ibex, red deer, einkorn wheat, and traces of bracken, which he may have eaten, or which may have come from leaves used to wrap his food. You will read that he ate a pancake. The charcoal that story rests on came from his lower intestine in an earlier study, and the 2018 paper suggests it could instead be linked to smoking or drying the meat. What his stomach held was whole wheat seeds, not a cake anybody would recognize. Maybe flatbread. Not a proven pancake.

Galen gave us the first version detailed enough to cook from, late second century. Tagenites, from tagenon, which means frying pan. Wheat flour and a lot of water poured into hot olive oil, turned over, then turned again another two or maybe three times, with honey or salt added depending on who was making it. No dairy, whatever you may have read elsewhere. That etymology is the entire story of the dish and I find it weirdly comforting.

From there it never goes quiet. Roman ova spongia, which is really an egg and milk dish with no flour in it, French crespes in the 1300s, English cryspes in The Forme of Cury around 1390, Elizabethan pancakes with cream and ale, Gervase Markham publishing his best version in 1615. Shrove Tuesday made it an institution. The Dutch brought pannenkoeken to New Netherland, flour and milk and eggs, flat as much by style as by necessity.

The tall pancake is the new part. Pearlash turns up in American Cookery in 1796, baking soda in the 1840s, Horsford’s baking powder work through the 1850s. The stack you picture is a nineteenth century object. Younger than the country.

Horsford used cornstarch to keep his baking powder from reacting before it got anywhere near a batter, which I did not know until I went looking. Mine has a tablespoon of cornstarch in it for a completely different reason, and three leaveners on top of that. Galen would recognize the pan. The rest would take some explaining.

What Makes These Fluffy Pancakes Different

A tablespoon of cornstarch is the secret ingredient in these fluffy pancakes. Cornstarch in pancakes sounds strange (I know, it’s the stuff you grab when the gravy is being difficult), and it went in the first time as an experiment and now it’s in there for good. It has no gluten, so swapping it in for a spoonful of flour gets you pancakes that are softer, no, softer AND taller.

Then the lift! Baking powder, baking soda, and a splash of vinegar all go in together, which looks like way too much on paper and is, somehow, exactly right. The vinegar and buttermilk give that baking soda plenty to react with, and the batter in the bowl looks the way soda water sounds.

Milk powder is the one I’d argue about with anybody. Plain nonfat dry milk from the baking aisle goes in with the flour, and the pancakes come off the griddle with that deep golden diner color and flavor, since you’re adding milk solids and zero extra liquid.

Last thing, the rest. The batter sits ten minutes, and by the time your griddle is hot it will have thickened up and gotten bubbly across the top. People online argue about whether resting pancake batter helps. I went back and forth on it for a while and I’m staying with the rest. Ten minutes of doing nothing at all, and they stand up taller on the plate!

How to Make Fluffy Pancakes

Step 1: Mix the Ingredients

1. Prep the Buttermilk: Stir the ¼ teaspoon of apple cider vinegar into the buttermilk and let it sit 5 minutes while you pull the rest out.
2. Whisk the Dry Ingredients: Flour, cornstarch, both sugars, baking powder, baking soda, salt, milk powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg go into a large bowl. Whisk until the brown sugar lumps are gone, you’ll spot them, little dark specks, so keep going.
3. Whisk the Wet Ingredients: Eggs, sour cream, vanilla, melted butter, and the buttermilk go in a second bowl. Let the sour cream and eggs sit out first, since cold ones seize the melted butter into little flecks.

Step 2: Combine and Rest the Batter

1. Mix Gently: Pour the wet into the dry and stir with a spatula until the dry streaks disappear, well, mostly disappear. Lumpy is right, and it looks wrong. Don’t overmix pancake batter or the gluten toughens up and they cook flat.
2. Rest the Batter: Ten to fifteen minutes on the counter. By the time you come back it will have thickened, with a few bubbles scattered across the top.

Step 3: Cook and Serve

1. Heat and Wipe the Pan: Medium heat, a little butter, then wipe it almost dry with a paper towel. Make one test pancake first (that one’s yours, it’s the rule).
2. Cook: About ¼ cup of batter per pancake. After 2 to 3 minutes the bubbles on top start popping and the edges turn from shiny to matte, you can almost hear them set, and that’s when to flip. Another 1 to 2 minutes and they’re perfectly golden.
3. Serve: Straight to the plate, butter first, warm syrup after. Cooking for a crowd, a 200°F oven on a sheet pan holds them while you finish the batch.

Make-Ahead & Storage for Fluffy Pancakes

• Mix the dry ahead. Whisk the dry ingredients together, the cornstarch and milk powder and spices too, and put them in a jar with a tight lid. That’s your own from-scratch pancake mix, good for as much as a month in the pantry (date the jar, the baking powder gives out first). Saturday morning you’ll just be cracking eggs!
• Keep the wet and dry apart overnight. I found out, the hard way, twice, that fully mixed batter left in the fridge overnight cooks up flat as a crepe. Completely awful! The baking soda starts reacting the second it meets the buttermilk, and by morning it’s spent. So the night before, whisk the eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and buttermilk in one bowl, cover it, and put it in the fridge. Pull it out when you start the coffee so the chill comes off before the melted butter goes in, then combine and rest ten minutes.
• Cooked pancakes in the fridge. Let them cool all the way, then put them in a zip-top bag with parchment between the layers. They’re good for as much as 3 days. The toaster is the way back, it crisps the edges up again and you can hear the crunch before you taste it. The microwave works too, they come out soft and a little bendy, which some people prefer, I’m told.
• Freezing. Freeze them flat on a sheet pan for about an hour, then move them into a freezer bag. Skip the sheet pan and you get one big pancake brick, which I have, in my freezer, right now. Good for as much as 2 months. Straight from frozen into the toaster, two rounds on medium!
• The Garnish Rule. Toppings go on after reheating, never before. Berries frozen onto a pancake thaw into a purple puddle and the pancake underneath gets soggy. Syrup too, and whipped cream obviously.
• Meal Prep Tip. Make a double batch on Sunday and freeze half. Weekday breakfast is a toaster and two minutes. It feels like cheating. It is cheating, a little, and it’s allowed!

Upgrades and Variations for Fluffy Pancakes

Once the base recipe feels easy, this is where it gets fun. One rule covers the add-ins: ½ to ¾ cup total, dropped onto the batter once it’s in the pan. Stir them into the bowl and they weigh the batter down, and you’ll overmix it trying to spread them around.

• Blueberry Pancakes: Scatter the blueberries over the wet top right after you pour, before the bubbles show up. Frozen ones go in straight from the bag. Thaw them first and the batter streaks gray-purple, I did that once, never again.
• Chocolate Chip Pancakes: Mini chips, pressed lightly into the top. Regular chips are heavy enough to sink straight through to the skillet and scorch there.
• Banana Pancakes: Lay thin banana coins on the batter and let them caramelize against the pan when you flip. The kitchen will smell like banana bread for an hour. A reader named Dixie went a different way and mashed one very ripe banana right into the batter, and she said they still came out fluffy.
• Cinnamon Swirl: Stir 2 tablespoons melted butter with 2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon, spoon it into a zip-top bag, and snip the corner. Pipe a spiral, well, a lopsided spiral, onto each pancake right after it goes into the pan. It tastes just like a cinnamon roll, only flat, and a little warmer, which makes no sense.
• Brown Butter: Brown the 4 tablespoons of butter before they go in, until the bits on the bottom are the color of a paper bag and the pan smells like toasted hazelnuts. Let it cool five minutes first. If you only try one upgrade, try this one!
• Toasted Pecans: Four minutes in a dry skillet, then scatter them on the batter like the blueberries. Raw pecans taste like the inside of a drawer.
• Lemon Zest: The zest of one lemon whisked into the wet ingredients. With blueberries it’s my favorite version, I think, depending on the day.

Chef’s Tips for Fluffy Pancakes

• Weigh the Flour: I weigh my flour now, 180 grams, and I fought doing that for years because it felt fussy. Scooping the cup straight into the bag packs in extra flour without you noticing, and those pancakes eat like coasters, I’ve served a few. No scale, fine, spoon it into the cup and level it off with a knife, same thing, pretty much.
• Check the Batter After the Rest: I always look at the batter after the rest, and it should fall off the spoon in slow, heavy ribbons, a little thicker than cake batter. Pancake batter too thick is my usual problem (that’s the sour cream, and I’m not giving it up), so I loosen it with buttermilk a tablespoon at a time. Runny happens to me maybe once a year, and a spoonful of flour sorts it out.
• Don’t Overmix: Put the whisk down and fold with a spatula. I count, which is silly, about fifteen folds and I stop, lumps and all.
• Leave It Alone After the Rest: Those bubbles across the top are lift you already paid for. I used to give it one last stir out of habit, like I was checking on it, and that knocks the air right back out.
• Test Your Baking Powder: Whenever the can has been open a while, I drop a spoonful into a little hot water, and it should fizz right away. Mine sat there once, flat as a puddle, and it had been expired for about a year, which explains a few Saturdays.
• The Water Drop Test: My test is a few drops of water flicked onto the pan, and they should skitter around like they’re late for something and vanish. When they just sit and steam, I wait another minute, the longest minute of the morning. Electric griddle people, 375°F.
• Flip Once, Never Press: One flip. Mine are confident about half the time and nervous the other half, and either way it works as long as it’s only one. Pressing down on the top with the spatula squashes out the air, and I still catch myself doing it.

Flavor Adjustment Guide for Fluffy Pancakes

When a batch goes sideways, it’s one of these. I’ve been through all of them, a few more than once.

• Flat Pancakes: I’ve stood at the stove asking myself why are my pancakes flat more times than I can count… and it’s nearly always the baking powder. Check the can (the fizz test is up in Chef’s Tips). If the can’s fine, the batter got overmixed, or somebody gave it one more stir after the rest, which I used to do constantly!
• Dense and Cakey: Cake like pancakes, thick and heavy and a little dry, mean too much flour went in. I scooped instead of weighing for years and wondered why mine never looked like the photos. For the rest of the bowl, fold in a tablespoon of buttermilk and the next ones come out lighter.
• Wet Pancakes, Gummy in the Middle: Golden outside, gummy in the middle, and you’ve already put two on somebody’s plate… ugh. The pan’s too hot. Turn it down a notch, pour a little less batter, and give them an extra minute after you turn them.
• Pale and Floppy: Flaccid is a strange word to find in a pancake recipe, but people search for flaccid pancakes, so here we are. Pale and limp means the pan’s too cool, or too greasy, or both. Wipe it almost dry and wait for the water drops to skitter. If you skipped the milk powder, that’s some of it too, since a lot of the golden color comes from those milk solids.
• Sticking: Sticky pancakes are a heat problem first and a pan problem second. My stainless skillet and I argued about this for a long time, and the skillet was right, mostly. Preheat it for a good two minutes, a thin film of butter, wipe, then pour, and that’s how to stop pancakes from sticking.
• Soapy or Metallic: A soapy taste with a tinny ring to it is leftover baking soda. It happens when the spoon is heaped instead of level, or when the vinegar got forgotten (guilty). Level spoons, vinegar in the buttermilk, and it’s gone next batch.
• Bland: Salt, before sugar. I know it’s breakfast. A bigger pinch of fine sea salt and all of a sudden you can taste the butter, and the vanilla, and the brown sugar you forgot was in there.
• Spongy or Rubbery: Spongy pancakes are almost always overmixed pancakes… the gluten got worked too hard. Or they went through the microwave, which, fine, I do that too on school mornings. The toaster next time!

Skip ahead Jump to Recipe

Key Ingredients for Fluffy Pancakes

All-Purpose Flour and Cornstarch: Plain all-purpose flour, whatever brand is in your pantry, and I weigh it (you’ve heard that by now). The tablespoon of cornstarch is part of the 1½ cups, swapped in rather than added on top, and that line on the recipe card is easy to read past.

Sour Cream: Full-fat, room temperature. I tried light sour cream once to be good, and the pancakes came out a little rubbery, a little sad, and I was back to full-fat the next weekend.

Buttermilk and Vinegar: Real cultured buttermilk, the thick kind from the dairy case. Lemon juice can stand in for the vinegar, and I use whichever one I reach first.

Eggs: Two large eggs. If you forgot to take them out, a bowl of warm tap water fixes that in five minutes, and by the time the griddle’s hot they’ll have warmed through.

Unsalted Butter: Unsalted, so the ½ teaspoon of fine sea salt is the only salt you’re counting. Melt it and let it sit a few minutes, warm but not hot (or brown it first, it’s up in Upgrades).

Brown Sugar and Granulated Sugar: A tablespoon each of granulated and packed light brown sugar. Barely sweet, well, sweet enough, since the syrup is on its way. I went deep on how brown and white sugar behave differently in my Chocolate Chip Cookies, if you want the long version.

Nonfat Dry Milk Powder: Look on the low shelf near the evaporated milk. One box lasts me months, and it gives the edges a toasty color that tastes the way it looks. Nido, which is full-fat milk powder, works too and runs a little richer.

Vanilla: Pure vanilla, a full tablespoon. That’s a lot, I know. I’ve tried less, and I keep coming back to it.

Cinnamon and Nutmeg: If you keep the little brown nutmegs around, grate one fresh, the smell alone is worth the thirty seconds. Pre-ground is fine, it’s only ⅛ teaspoon.

Baking Powder and Baking Soda: Aluminum-free baking powder if you can find it, since the regular kind can leave a faint metal taste in something this mild. And check the date on both, I say that as someone who didn’t.

Wine Pairings for Fluffy Pancakes

• Moscato d’Asti (Piedmont, Italy)
  Why it Works: Lightly fizzy and low in alcohol, so it’s one of the few wines I’ll pour before noon without any guilt. Sweet food wants a wine at least as sweet as the plate or the wine tastes sour, so go light on the maple syrup with this one. The bubbles scrub the butter off your tongue between bites of these fluffy pancakes.
  Tasting Notes: Orange blossom, ripe peach, honey, Meyer lemon
  Suggested Label: Vietti Moscato d’Asti Cascinetta
• Tokaji Late Harvest (Tokaj, Hungary)
  Why it Works: Apricot and honey with a streak of acidity running straight down the middle. I’d pour this with the banana pancakes or the toasted pecans, since the noble rot gives it a nutty, almost caramel side that meets both of them halfway.
  Tasting Notes: Apricot, ginger, honeycomb, saffron
  Suggested Label: Royal Tokaji Late Harvest
• Sauternes or Barsac (Bordeaux, France)
  Why it Works: Rich, golden, and thick enough to leave legs down the glass. Save it for dessert pancakes, the ones with whipped cream or ice cream on top, the version I make when brunch runs into the afternoon. There’s enough acidity at the finish that you’ll want another sip, then another forkful.
  Tasting Notes: Pineapple, toasted almond, crème brûlée, dried mango
  Suggested Label: Château Doisy-Daëne
• Riesling Auslese (Mosel, Germany)
  Why it Works: Sweet and sharp in the same sip, like biting into a green apple dipped in honey. It’s my pick with the blueberry pancakes and lemon zest, because the lime and apple in the glass line right up with the fruit. At around 8 percent alcohol, it’s gentle enough for a Sunday morning.
  Tasting Notes: Golden apple, lime zest, petrol, honeyed pear
  Suggested Label: Dr. Loosen Riesling Auslese Ürziger Würzgarten

FAQs

Equipment Needed for Fluffy Pancakes

• Kitchen Scale: For the flour, 180 grams. It’s the one tool on this list I’d tell you to go buy, they’re cheap, and mine gets used for a lot more than pancakes now.
• Large Mixing Bowl: For the dry ingredients, and big enough to take the wet ones too when it’s time to fold.
• Medium Mixing Bowl: For the wet ingredients, and it’s the bowl that goes in the fridge overnight if you’re making ahead.
• Measuring Cups and Spoons: Level them off, especially for the baking soda. A heaped half teaspoon is how I ended up with soapy pancakes one morning.
• Whisk: For the dry ingredients and the wet ones. Then put it down, it’s done its job.
• Rubber Spatula: The folding tool. About fifteen folds, and then it goes in the sink too.
• Nonstick or Cast Iron Skillet: Either one. Cast iron browns deeper and takes longer to heat, so give it the full two minutes and the water drop test. Nonstick is easier on a sleepy Saturday.
• Wide, Thin Turner: A thin edge slides right under the pancake. I keep a cheap metal one just for pancakes (not on nonstick, obviously).
• Paper Towels: For wiping the pan almost dry between batches.
• ¼ Cup Measure or Scoop: Same size pancakes cook in the same time, which is the only way I’ve gotten a batch to finish together.
• Sheet Pan and Wire Rack (Optional): For holding batches in a 200°F oven. The rack lets air under them, so the bottoms stay crisp.
• Electric Griddle (Optional): Set to 375°F, it fits eight at a time, which matters with a table full of people waiting.

Related Recipes You’ll Love:

If you like making fluffy pancakes from scratch, these are the recipes I’d point you to next:

French Toast Recipe — The other half of my Saturday rotation. Thick bread, a slow custard soak, and the warm syrup you already have out.

The (Actual) Best Banana Bread Recipe — Sour cream in this one too, which tells you something about me. Dark brown sugar, a splash of rum, and it’s better the next day.

Creamy Deviled Eggs Recipe — The savory plate I set out next to the pancakes when people come over for brunch, and it empties first.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe, Ever — The brown sugar note from Key Ingredients, taken a lot further. This is the long version.

The Best Cheddar Cheese Biscuits — Sharp cheddar and garlic butter, and they come together fast, for the brunch table that needs something salty.