Every food blogger has the perfect German Oven Pancake. This isn’t it. This one is my perfect German Oven Pancake. And that’s the beauty of German pancakes. They’re wonderfully simple, endlessly adaptable, and nearly always delicious. This is buttery, golden, beautifully puffed, and about as easy as breakfast gets.
German Oven Pancakes
Mix, pour, bake, and watch the magic happen. It will be on the table in under 30 no-effort minutes with just a handful of everyday ingredients. If you decide it’s perfect, wonderful. If you want to tweak it next time and make it even more your own, that’s wonderful, too.
About German Oven Pancakes:
I’m going to skip the full history lesson on German Oven Pancakes – sometimes called Dutch Babies, Puffy Pancakes, or Hootenannies. You can find that just about anywhere.
Instead, I’ll tell you why I love this version. I’ve been making oven pancakes for over 45 years, and this one checks all the boxes for me.
- It rises dramatically in the oven, with beautifully puffed edges surrounding a rich, custardy center. It’s buttery, tender, and every bit as satisfying to eat as it is to pull from the oven.
- Unlike some of my other versions, this one is baked in a 9 x 13-inch casserole dish, making it a better choice for feeding a family.
One thing to know: don’t expect an oven pancake to carry the whole breakfast. It rises high, makes a grand entrance, and then settles down. It’s mostly air and drama. See Serve With, below, for ideas to fill out the plate and keep your hungry horde from raiding the pantry an hour later.
German Oven Pancakes just out of the oven. That custardy bottom just soaks up the lemon and powdered sugar.
Making German Oven Pancakes:
German oven pancakes are simple, but a few small details make a big difference.
Start with room-temperature ingredients.
Cold eggs and milk can hold back the dramatic rise that makes these pancakes so much fun.
- Warm the milk: Microwave it for 30 seconds at a time, just until the chill is gone.
- Warm the eggs: Let them sit at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes, place them in a bowl under a gentle stream of warm (not hot) water for about 5 minutes, or soak them in warm water for about 10 minutes.
Let the batter rest.
Mix the batter before preheating the oven so it has time to sit. That’s enough time, but a little longer is even better, up to about 30 minutes total. Resting allows the flour to fully hydrate and helps create a better texture. It’s a useful trick for almost any pancake batter.
Give the oven a little extra time.
Preheat the baking dish along with the oven. Once the oven reaches temperature, it measures the air temperature and cycles off. Let it run a few extra minutes to thoroughly heat the oven walls and the pan. When it’s time to bake, work quickly so you don’t lose too much heat.
About the butter:
The amount of butter and bit of butter in the batter are touches that set my recipe apart. It’s the richness. If it’s too much for you (or you’re pinching every penny), many recipes use no butter in the batter. Leave it out if you want. And the amount in the bottom of the pan can vary from three to six tablespoons.
No blender?
A blender makes quick work of the batter, but it’s not essential. The batter is easy to whisk by hand. Start by thoroughly whisking the eggs, then dump in the remaining ingredients and whisk until smooth.
When is it done?
Watch the pancake carefully toward the end of baking. Because it cooks at a high temperature, there isn’t much room for error. Every oven is different, so treat the baking time as a guideline rather than a guarantee. (And hopefully your oven is cleaner than mine!)
The best indicator is color. The top edges should be puffed and golden brown. What throws some people is that the center and bottom can still look a little moist. That’s exactly what you want. Not liquid, but set, custardy, and perhaps just a little shiny. Overbake it, and you’ll lose some of that wonderful texture.
German Oven Pancakes – the dramatic rise falls once out of the oven, but kids love to watch it! And this is why you remove the top rack!
Serve With:
The classic topping is a dusting of powdered sugar and a squeeze of lemon, but berries are always welcome. Other fruit is lovely, too, especially if you take a few extra minutes to sauté sliced apples, pears, or peaches in a little butter and sugar (or brown sugar). It turns a simple breakfast into a bit of an occasion. And you can never go wrong with jam, fruit compote, or a drizzle of syrup.
On the side, think breakfast classics – but nothing else that needs oven space. Hash browns, bacon, and sausage are favorites here at Frugal Hausfrau. They’re hearty and help round out the meal.
Leftover German Oven Pancakes:
Store in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for three to four days. It will never be the same, but it’s so good you probably won’t mind.
- For best results, reheat servings, lightly covered, in the microwave.
- I have never attempted to freeze. This is a fleeting thing and simple to make.
If You Like German Oven Pancakes, You Might Also Like:
Check out my extensive menu for Breakfast and Brunch, but here are two favorites to start you out, and you’ll see plenty of options for sides for your pancakes, too.
- Apple Oven Pancakes – lean more toward pancakes as they’re made in Germany, a CI recipe.
Apple Oven Pancake – just out of the oven,
- Swedish Pancakes – these are silver dollar pancakes, light, airy, and fluffy, soufflé-like with crisp edges.
Swedish Pancakes
Winning at the Grocery:
The secret isn’t always where you shop, it’s when. Do take advantage of discount stores like Aldi and Lidl, and shop selectively at your buyers’ club. Shop ethnic markets if you have them and watch grocery sales. But that’s not the full picture.
Most ingredients have predictable sales cycles. Learning those patterns can make a bigger impact on your grocery budget than chasing sales and coupons alone.
I try to buy ingredients at their best value and keep enough on hand to avoid paying top price later. It’s a simple idea, but it has saved me far more than any coupon ever did.
Learn more in my Winning at the Grocery series. Here’s it plays out in my kitchen with this recipe. The eggs came from Easter sales. The butter from my freezer? Purchased at $1.99 a pound instead of the usual $4.99. The berries were picked up before a holiday sale. None of those savings happened when I made these pancakes. They happened over weeks and months before. One smart purchase doesn’t change much. Do it over and over, and eventually an entire meal is built from ingredients bought at a discount.
Eggs:
Eggs are powerhouses! Even when you’re paying more for them, they have a higher protein per dollar ratio than most realize (or maybe even think about).
- For everyday pricing, Aldi, Lidl, and buyers’ clubs (you’ll need to buy larger quantities at the buyers’ club) are often hard to beat. But their prices don’t always match the deep holiday sales you’ll sometimes find at traditional grocery stores.
- When eggs hit a great sale price, buy more. According to the American Egg Board, eggs generally keep 4 to 5 weeks after the pack date, which is often about 3 to 4 weeks or more after purchase.
- For the longest storage life, keep eggs in their original carton on a lower shelf in the refrigerator rather than in the door, where temperatures fluctuate more.
Butter:
If you have a deep freeze (and if you can swing one, consider it), there’s rarely a reason to pay full price for butter. It freezes beautifully and goes on sale regularly throughout the year.
- While holiday sales are common, the deepest discounts often appear before the winter holidays and are frequently matched around Easter. Count the weeks until the next major sale and stock up accordingly.
- Discount grocers such as Aldi and Lidl usually offer excellent everyday butter prices and often participate in holiday promotions as well.
- Properly wrapped butter keeps well in the freezer for months, making it one of the easiest ingredients to buy low and use later.
Hey, all, thanks for visiting, and I’m always glad to see you here. I hope you’ll find my German Oven Pancakes hit the spot. They’re too easy to be overlooked, and happy cooking!
Mollie
German Oven Pancakes – use whatever fruit you have or better: whatever fruit is on sale.
German Oven Pancakes
A simple oven pancake that’s beautifully rich and puffs beautifully.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 22 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
- Category: Breakfast or Brunch
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 6 eggs at room temperature
- 1 cup milk at room temperature
- 1 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar (optional)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
- 1/2 teaspoonf salt
- 1 stick of butter, divided into 8 tablespoons
- for serving: lemon and powdered sugar, and or berries, fruit, jam, and or syrup
Instructions
Melt two tablespoons of butter in the microwave. Set aside as you add the eggs, milk, flour, salt, sugar if using, and vanilla if using, to a blender. Add in the 2 tablespoons of butter. Blend until just smooth; a few small lumps are fine, stopping to scrape down as needed. Do not overblend; blend only enough to mix the ingredients. Set aside to rest as the oven preheats. (If time allows, allow to rest for 20 to 25 minutes.)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F., with a rack in the middle of the oven and any other racks below, to allow for the high puff. For the best puff, preheat a 9×13″ pan as the oven preheats and keep the oven on with the pan inside for at least 10 minutes if time allows.
When the time is up, working quickly, scatter the remaining six tablespoons of butter pieces in the pan to melt. Open and close the door quickly. Keep a close eye on it so it doesn’t burn. Once melted, give the batter a gentle stir to break up any large bubbles, then open the oven, quickly pour in the batter right into the center of the pan, and immediately close the oven door.
Don’t open the oven door while baking.
Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until edges are golden brown. Have everything set up before the pancake is ready to be removed from the oven. A pancake waits for no man; man should wait for the pancake. It will begin to fall as soon as it’s removed from the oven.
Remove and serve immediately. Tradition dictates serving with lemon wedges and powdered sugar. Berries, fruit, jam, or syrup are all options.
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