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Comment by hiisukun | Hacker News Reader

When my wife makes crepes, she mixes the recipe the night before in a jug. I don't know why (sorry!) but they turn out delicious and she swears this step is important. Lovely and thin, with a good consistency. I've also no idea if they are legit 'French crêpes'.

The recipe is:

- 1 cup of plain flour

- 1 large egg

- 1 1/3 cup milk (half milk half water usually too!)

- 2 tblspoons of melted butter

The first 3 are combined the night before and whizzed up, then left in the fridge. The melted butter you do on the morning of -- melt it in the pan then tip it into the other mixture and stir it a little. Having made it the night before is ideal if you're visiting a friend in the morning, too.

Your pan technique sounds identical to us : ) ... enjoy!

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The main reason you prepare crêpe batter long before you want to use it is two fold: 1. Allows a bit of gluten development (like cold ferment in bread) 2. And (i believe) most importantly: it allows all the air that was incorporated during whisking to escape, resulting in an even batter

Always wondering if you could just stick it in a vacuum pump...

If you want to knock air out of a batter faster just slap the sheet it’s in against the table.

We have lots of regional variations for crepes in France. In mine, we add a sip of white beer or even rum to flavor it, you don't need to add much and it changes everything !

> When my wife makes crepes, she mixes the recipe the night before in a jug. I don't know why (sorry!) but they turn out delicious and she swears this step is important.

I don’t know the details, but there’s an ongoing reaction involving the gluten in the dough that leads to smoother surfaced, thinner pancakes.

> night before in a jug

I recall this is done for galettes which uses buckwheat flour and is typically savoury.

Keeping it longer develops gluten which would make it more gummy I suppose? This is when making tempura you wanna use cold water and minimal mixing so it's crunchier.

that's pretty much the recipe i learned from my grandmother in austria. without the butter though.

except i eventually discovered that it doesn't really matter if i use milk or water. since it is less common where i live i simply stopped using milk entirely.

also my mother puts in sugar in the dough. i don't remember if my grandmother did that, but why bother. you can put enough sugar as topping to compensate.

i had a batch of dough overnight just thus weekend. i could not tell the difference.

i make the dough as thin as possible, unless i include a filling that needs to be baked, like cheese, banana or apple

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