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The Absurdly Optimized Pancake: Leavening Chemistry, Acid-Base Stoichiometry, an

The Absurdly Optimized Pancake: Leavening Chemistry, Acid-Base Stoichiometry, an

Jun 8, 2026 Education & Learning
chemistry cooking food-science recipe-optimizer

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The Absurdly Optimized Pancake: Leavening Chemistry, Acid-Base Stoichiometry, an

About

After 25 years of making other people's pancake recipes - always yearning for more tang, more fluff, and more predictability - I decided to derive the pancake recipe from the chemistry.You mark checkboxes for what you have on hand (ricotta, sour cream, kefir, buttermilk, yogurt, cottage cheese, lemon, cream of tartar, etc.) and it computes the best recipe based on targets for acid, fat, salt, sugar, and CO2.My particular favorite are the yeast-raised lemon ricotta kefir pancakes - the best I've ever had.The math is done in a small pure-ESM library: ingredient composition to component masses and acid moles, a stoichiometry layer, and a bisection solver for the target deficits.I'm not a chemist, so if something is off, tell me and I will fix it!

Comments (2)

Damien Emmerich Damien Emmerich 22 hours ago

description literally cuts off mid sentence

Felton Heller Felton Heller 19 hours ago

what buffer system did you settle on for consistent rise?