When you do a survey of dutch baby pancake recipes you’ll notice the main players are always eggs, flour, and milk. The goal is to create a one pan showstopper with dramatic rise, the kind you experience with gougères or popovers. Some recipes use a ratio that is heavier on the eggs, others lean on the structure of flour a bit more, but they’re usually in a similar ballpark. You bake a dutch baby hot, which facilitates air expansion, ensuring a reliable, signature rise.
Dutch Baby Technique
The two main considerations here are mixing the batter and oven temperature. Here are my thoughts on both.
- By hand or by blender: Typically, you can mix dutch baby batter by whisk or by blender. I switched up my technique after reading a Donna Hay approach where she uses a blender to blend the eggs for a good amount of time before incorporating the rest of the ingredients. It works a lot of air into the batter resulting in big rise. Pouring the batter from the blender into a hot pan is convenient as well.
- Oven temperature: Nearly every dutch baby recipe will have you bake at a temperature between 400°F and 475°F. I like to lean towards the hot end of that spectrum, and use a pre-heated, hot pan to boost as well. This really gets that boost going. The temperature is then dialed back a bit after things get going to finish and set the dutch baby.
Dutch Baby Variations
Once you get the hang of making the basic dutch baby recipe down below, you can experiment with all sorts of tweaks and variations, both sweet and savory! Some ideas:
- Cinnamon Sugar Dutch Baby: Like cinnamon toast in pancake form, sprinkle your dutch baby with cinnamon sugar immediately as it comes out of the oven. I like to add a few crushed dried rose petals on this one as well.
- Dutch Baby with Apples: Cut an apple into a 1/4-inch dice. Saute the apples in a couple tablespoons of butter over medium heat for a few minutes, until they soften up a bit. Pour the batter into the hot pan, and quickly get it into the oven. Bonus points for finishing with some cinnamon sugar as well. You can also use this approach with pears.
- Dutch Baby with Citrus Furikake: Skip the sugar, stir some chopped, deeply caramelized onions into your batter, and finish the dutch baby generously with furikake when it comes out of the oven. This approach is also really great using za’atar – but I put za’atar in the batter and also on top after baking.
- Dutch Baby with Pesto: Another savory idea. Stir a couple tablespoons of pesto into your dutch baby batter and skip the sugar. Serve topped with a dusting of freshly grated Parmesan and tangle of arugula.
- Gingerbread Dutch Baby: One last idea! Make yourself a gingerbread spice blend by combining 4 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon ground cloves, 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (optional), 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper. Use this to season your batter before baking, then add more along with some sugar, after baking. Smells so good!
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