With about 100g of sourdough starter leftover from making bread, you can make a dozen crêpes. Having a crêpe usually feels to me like true richness, and having extras in the fridge for later is a great wealth.
To begin
- 100 g sourdough starter
- 200 g water, 80F
- 175 g all-purpose or bread flour
Mix water and starter together, then add flour and stir with your hand until smooth. Cover with a dish towel and leave it out at room temperature for ~8h, or overnight. If you're making this mixture much earlier in the day, for cooking the next day, you can leave it out until you're about to go to bed, and then put it in the fridge overnight. It doesn't have to be exact timing.
After sitting overnight or ~8h
- 75 g all-purpose or bread flour
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup plus 1T milk
- 3 T sugar
- 1/2 t baking soda
- 1/2 t kosher salt
- 3 T melted butter
Also need an unflavored oil for the pan, and fillings (jam, crème fraîche, mascarpone, sugar and lemon, ham and cheese, etc).
Gather your ingredients, get the mixture out of the fridge if it was in there. Start by melting that 3T of butter so it will be ready for you, and begin pre-heating the pan when the time feels right.
Mix in the ingredients, whisking to smooth. Add more milk if you need, it's a fairly thick consistency.
To cook, lightly coat a crêpe pan or skillet with oil or butter, and warm it to medium-high.
Ladle a bit of batter into the center of the pan. I got a crêpe spreader (wooden T shape thing) and spatula when I visited Caitlin in Paris, which has made crêpe making way more fun. If you have a spreader, you twirl the T shape to swoop the batter out evenly in a circle. Otherwise, tilt the pan around to try to get it to spread to an even thickness. (I like to have a bowl or tupperware on hand as a landing zone for the spreader while I'm not using it, to contain the batter.)
Cook until the surface isn't goopy and raw looking anymore, and you can see little bubbles. Pay attention to how the top looks and smells, then what you see when you flip -- after some practice, you'll be able to judge what the under side is doing by how the top looks. When it's ready to flip, slide the spatula under and gently lift, then flip, and cook the other side to golden. (A much shorter time!) If you don't have a crêpe spatula (it looks sortof like an oversized paint stirrer sword, with beveled edges), try other spatulas and kitchen tools you have that can help slide under the crêpe and flip it.
Pile the crêpe on a plate, and keep cooking. Or, eat in the kitchen and take turns cooking and eating with someone else until you're both full, and then cook the rest of the batter up for crêpes for later. The "stand there and eat the first one(s)" method is what Adam and I often do.
This recipe is mostly based on the Epicurous recipe, with some changes along the way. I also sometimes make a buckwheat version of this, similar to this Tartine recipe with the recipe being essentially the same, but substitue a smaller amount of buckwheat flour, and make a runnier dough. Those are very good for dinner.