I’ve used the Bocuse crepe batter for years and I’ve changed exactly one thing in it. The sugar is gone. He calls for two tablespoons in a half-litre batter. I put in none at all, and the crepes come off the pan better than they ever did when I followed the book.
The batter
250 g plain flour. 4 eggs. 500 ml whole milk. 50 g butter, melted and left to cool. A good pinch of salt. If you want the classic finish, a tablespoon of rum or orange flower water, and it’s fine without.
Flour and salt in a wide bowl, well in the middle, eggs into the well. Whisk from the centre and pull the flour in slowly, so you get a thick smooth paste before any milk goes near it. That order is the whole trick against lumps. Then the milk in a thin stream, whisking, then the butter last. If you rushed it and there are lumps anyway, push the batter through a sieve and forget about it.
Rest it. An hour in the fridge minimum, two is better. The flour takes up the liquid, the gluten relaxes, and the crepes stop tearing when you flip them. The batter will be noticeably thicker coming out of the fridge than it went in, which is normal. Loosen it with a splash of milk or plain water until it runs off the back of a spoon fast and leaves a thin film behind.
Why the sugar comes out
Sugar browns long before the batter has set. With two tablespoons in there you get dark blotches in a pan that’s barely warm enough to cook the crepe through, and pale raw-tasting lace in between them. Take it out and the colour follows the heat instead of running ahead of it, which means you control it. That fine brown web over a cream surface in the photo is what an unsweetened batter does on medium heat.
It also stops sticking. Sugar catches on the pan surface and glues the crepe down in patches, and when you slide the spatula under, it tears there. No sugar, clean release, and you can go longer between butterings.
The worry people have is that they’ll come out pale. They don’t. There’s plenty of milk in this batter and milk brings its own sugar, plus four eggs’ worth of protein, so the browning happens anyway. It just takes a slightly hotter pan and about fifteen seconds longer, and it lands evenly across the whole surface instead of in scorched spots.
Then there’s taste. A sweet crepe filled with jam is sweet twice over, and the flour and butter disappear under it. With none in the batter you can still taste what the crepe is made of, and the same crepe takes ham and grated cheese without anyone wondering why the wrapper is dessert. One batter, both jobs, which was the real reason I stopped.
Cooking them
A 24 cm pan, medium heat, steady. Wipe it with butter on a paper towel, so there’s a film and no pool. Half a ladle in the middle, lift the pan off the heat and swirl it in one movement to the edge, back on the heat. Around a minute on the first side, until the edge lifts and goes lacy, then 20 or 30 seconds on the second.
The first one is always bad. That’s the pan telling you it isn’t ready. Eat it standing up and carry on.
Stack them flat on a plate as they come off. They steam each other soft, which is what you want for rolling later. A clean tea towel over the top if the kitchen is cold.
They keep three days covered in the fridge and they freeze with greaseproof paper between them. Reheat in a dry pan, 15 seconds a side. Not the microwave, which turns them to leather.
Yogurt and mango
This is where an unsweetened batter pays off. A spoon of thick plain yogurt in the middle, cold, and mango over it, either fresh flesh scraped to a pulp or a thick puree. The crepe underneath is neutral, so the sour of the yogurt and the sweet of the mango do all the work and you can actually taste both of them.
Put the yogurt on first and the mango on top, so the fruit runs down over it instead of soaking straight into the crepe. Smear a little butter on the plate before the crepe goes down if you’re eating it hot. Fold it in four and it holds, roll it and it leaks, which is a fair trade for how it looks.
Mango and yogurt is the version I keep coming back to. Two tablespoons of sugar in the batter would bury it.