There's a scene in the 1989 flick "Uncle Buck" where the eponymous character makes a stack of massive pancakes for his nephew's birthday:
I have two kids who are pancake lovers and I'd love to replicate this, but most internet sites are absolutely no help. One source claimed to have a "how-to" for Uncle Buck pancakes but made ones that were only about a foot in diameter.
I'm looking to your thinking as engineers to help. My first thought would be to put a giant greased cookie sheet across all four burners of my stove but the heat would be uneven and there's still the problem of flipping.
Is a three-foot pancake possible outside a commercial kitchen? How would you do it?
__________________
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. -Camus
Largest pancake
The largest pancake was created in Rochdale, Manchester, UK in 1994, by the Co-Operative Union, Ltd. Measuring 15.01 m (49 ft 3 in) in diameter and 2.5 cm (1 in) thick, the pancake weighed 3 tonnes (6,614 lb), and took more than just a frying pan to flip over!
I make pizza in the oven on thick pizza stones. One is round one is square.
I heat them up for an hour at 550 degrees and have done experiments with different dough and methods.
The stones get hot enough and have enough thermal mass to cook on without hot/cool spots. Occasionally I will pull one out of the hot oven and place in on the stove top to pre-cook a crust.
With some parchment paper on top nothing will stick to it.
I'm sure.. in fact I'll try and make at least one big flapjack using the hot pizza stone.
A ten minute reheat of the stone between pizza is best.
A cookie sheet can be used as a peel.
I make a lot of pancakes and my ultra miniature stacks of carefully drizzled mix was always a hit with me and mine.
You can buy large pieces of sheet metal (2-foot x 2-foot) at places like Lowes or Home Depot.
Buy 2 sheets and cover them both with heavy duty aluminum foil. Then spray them with cooking spray.
The trick is put BOTH of them on top of the stove, one on top of the other. Once the upper sheet is hot, pour on the batter. Wait until the top of the batter gets waxy-looking, then lift the upper piece of sheet metal and flip the pancake onto the lower sheet. Watch the temperature, since the lower sheet will be hotter. Within a minute, the pancake should be done.
Needless to say, you might want to use leather welder’s gloves to grab and flip the top sheet.
__________________
Whiskey, women -- and astrophysics. Because sometimes a problem can't be solved with just whiskey and women.
"then lift the upper piece of sheet metal and flip the pancake onto the lower sheet."
Just to avoid accidents: how about, move the upper sheet with the half cooked pancake on it; flip the bottom sheet onto the top; flip the whole sandwich back onto the cooker, then, remove the first sheet.
__________________
We are alone in the universe, or, we are not. Either way it's incredible... Adapted from R. Buckminster Fuller/Arthur C. Clarke
I would modify that a bit by pulling out the bottom sheet, putting it on top, and then flipping the whole thing. That way, the uncooked side of the pancake starts out on a hot surface, which may help prevent sticking.
__________________
In vino veritas; in cervisia carmen; in aqua E. coli.
Hey, there's nothing wrong with a little drama in the kitchen,,,reminds me of the story about the pizza maker who almost suffocated when he was flipping dough.
You need a big Paella pan and a pizza peel and that should do. The paella pans come in 4 foot and even 8 foot diameters and have burner racks that hold them.
https://www.tienda.com/paella/paella_pans.html
__________________
Most people are mostly good most of the time.
One of the major constraints here is that the cooking surface is to be heated by fire. If that constraint were removed, the choice of cooking vessel and cooking surface would be much larger.
One of my backpacking companions used to provide us with "boiled cake". He would put cake mix in a zip lock, add water and put the whole thing in a pot of boiling water. Since the internal temperature for a cake is 175 to 200 deg F, it would bake very nicely in the boiling water.
The approach that I would consider then for the "Uncle Buck's pancakes" would be to make a shallow wooden mold (3' diameter x 1/4" high). Put in the pancake batter and cook it with steam, either from a hose or in a steam chamber. The pancakes wouldn't brown at all, so that could be done with a propane torch.
__________________
Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft! - Theodore Roosevelt
Was the batter evenly distributed in the plastic bag? Did he boil the water in a wide pan and laid the bag so the batter was flat? If he dunked it in a saucepan with the closure on top and the batter sort of slumped in the bottom I'd expect uneven baking. What a great idea, though. I'll pass it along to my outdoorsy friends.
The cake mix and water were combined in a 1 qt. ziplock, kneaded from the outside to mix, then dropped into a small size saucepan (approx 6" dia x 3" high) of boiling water. The heat transfer from the hot water to the ziplock on the bottom and sides must have been quite good since I don't remember any uneven cooking.
LG_Dave
__________________
Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft! - Theodore Roosevelt
Thanks, LG, I'm going to try this out of curiosity. I'm impressed that whoever thought this up realized that the critical issue was heating the batter to the right temperature, not necessarily the cooking method. I bet that was nice moist cake too, perhaps served with some wild berries picked along the way?
The cake was nice and moist and we had wild berries whenever the bears didn't object. The altitude 6,000 to 8,000 feet, so the water was boiling at about 197 to 201 F.
Please report on your results.
LG_Dave
__________________
Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft! - Theodore Roosevelt
Comments rated to be Good Answers:
Comments rated to be "almost" Good Answers: