Flädle (German crêpes)

Method

1. Blend the wet ingredients first. Put the eggs, milk, mineral water, salt and melted butter in a blender and run it for 20 to 30 seconds, until the mixture is smooth and frothy with a head of fine bubbles. Blending the liquids alone means there is nothing for the flour to clump against later.
2. Add the flour and starch, and stop early. Tip both in together and pulse only until the flour disappears, scraping the sides once and pulsing two or three more times. Do not let the blender run on. Flour worked hard in a blender builds gluten fast, and overworked batter makes Flädle that turn rubbery and tear when you roll them.
3. By hand instead, if you prefer. Whisk the flour, starch and salt in a bowl, pour in about a third of the milk and beat it to a smooth thick paste before loosening with the rest. Whisk in the eggs one at a time, then the melted butter and mineral water. Starting thick is what gets rid of the lumps.
4. Rest the batter for 30 minutes at room temperature. The flour hydrates and the starch swells, and the Flädle come out tender rather than tough. The batter thickens as it stands, so loosen it with a splash of milk before cooking. It should run off a spoon in a thin unbroken ribbon, about the consistency of single cream.
5. Split the batch here if you are making both. With a double batch, pour half into a second bowl now, while the batter is still plain. Sweeten that half by hand with 20 to 30 g of sugar per half batch, stirred in gently with a spatula. Fold herbs or cooled fillings into the savoury half at the very last moment, just before it hits the pan. Anything stirred in early sinks and bleeds colour into the batter.
6. Heat a 24 cm pan over medium heat and wipe it with butter on a folded piece of kitchen paper. The pan is ready when a drop of batter sets on contact without browning instantly.
7. Cook each Flädle about 1 minute. Ladle in just enough batter to coat the base, swirling the pan as you pour so it spreads thin and even. Cook until the surface loses its wet shine and the edges lift, then flip and give it 30 seconds more. Flädle should stay pale gold and flexible, never crisp and never deeply browned.
8. Stack them as you go on a plate set over a pan of barely simmering water, covered with a clean tea towel. They steam gently and stay soft.

Notes

• The starch is the difference between a Flädle and a rubber mat. Potato starch or cornflour dilutes the gluten, so the pancake stays soft enough to roll cold the next day. Plain flour alone is traditional and perfectly good eaten straight from the pan, but it stiffens as it cools.
• The first Flädle is a test, not a failure. It calibrates the heat and the amount of batter. Every cook eats it standing up.
• Rolled and sliced into 5 mm ribbons, these become Flädlesuppe, the Swabian pancake soup. Cool the stack first; warm Flädle stick to themselves.
• They keep 3 days refrigerated, stacked with baking paper between them, and reheat in a dry pan in seconds. They also freeze well interleaved the same way.
• Where this goes next is savoury herb Flädle and sweet Flädle, which are the same batter with a fold-in and a filling.

Ingredient substitutions

• Potato starch and cornflour behave the same here and either is stocked everywhere in Germany (Kartoffelstärke, Speisestärke) and Canada (potato starch, cornstarch). Rice flour also works and gives a very slightly sandy edge.
• Whole milk gives the tenderest Flädle. Semi-skimmed works. Plant milks work too, oat being closest, though the batter browns a little faster because of the sugars.