HOW TO MAKE A DELICIOUS LUMP-FREE CREPE BATTER

In the kitchen, lumps don't have a good reputation: at best, they are synonymous with wasted time eliminating them, at worst with a failed recipe. Let's take a closer look at what a lump is, and the unbeatable techniques for avoiding them.

Lumps

A lump is a small mass of flour created by a lack of milk during the initial stages of mixing.

Only wheat flour is affected because buckwheat does not form lumps.

The lump is particularly noticeable when you follow almost all crepe batter recipes which advise you to make a "well" into which you pour the milk. If you have the misfortune to mix too much flour with the milk at any given moment, instead of gently swirling the milk in the well with the whisk so that it carries the flour around it, you've lost. And such misfortune happens so quickly!

The lump is a problem when  turning the batter on an electric crepe maker: it will get stuck between the spreader and the griddle and create "scrapes" in the crepe.

When cooking in a pan, small lumps are not important, and large ones are only a problem for aesthetic reasons.

3 techniques to prevent lumps

Sifting the flour

The finer the grain of flour, the less likely they are to clump together. In real life this is not very practical: who has a flour sieve at home? Or the right sieve?
I advise you to achieve the same result by buying fluid flour (which is what I do in France), but it will almost always be industrial flour.

Mix the sugar with the flour before adding the milk

The magazine "Pour la Science" published a very serious article on the subject.

Pour the flour into the milk/egg mixture

The solid goes into the liquid. This is what I do. The results are UN-beatable!

HOW TO REMOVE LUMPS

Well, if you're reading this, you haven't followed my great crepe batter recipe and the worst has already happened...

Don't panic!

Pour the batter into a sieve or strainer and crush the lumps with the back of a spoon. Add a little milk to dilute them in the sieve and your dough will be resurrected without anyone knowing what happened!