Crepe with salmon

This article is about the thin pancake. For the decorative paper, see Crepe with salmon paper.

They are often served with a wide variety of fillings such as cheese, fruit, vegetables, meats, and a variety of spreads. Crêpes can also be flambéed, such as in crêpes Suzette. French pilgrims that were visiting Rome for the Chandeleur. There are a few superstitions around the preparation of crêpes for Le Jour des Crêpes. Another version of the tradition involves cooking a crêpe with a gold coin on top. Some hide the first crêpe in a drawer instead of eating it for good luck in the coming year. Eating and sharing crêpes with others on Candlemas is another tradition based on popes giving food to the poor every year on February 2.

When sweet, they can be eaten as part of breakfast or as a dessert. Savory crêpes are made with non-wheat flours such as buckwheat. A normal savory crêpe recipe includes using wheat flour but omitting the sugar. Crêpes can also be made into crepe cakes by stacking plain crepes on top of each other, adding a layer of filling between the layers. Most crêpe cakes are sweet and considered dessert.

It can also replace the traditional birthday cake. Crêpe cakes are usually 15-30 layers, and the crêpes used are very thin and soft. Batters can also consist of other ingredients such as butter, milk, water, eggs, flour, salt, and sugar. Fillings are commonly added to the center of the crêpe and served with the edges partially folded over the center. The standard recipe for French crêpe calls for flour, eggs, milk, salt, and butter. In the industrial production of crêpes, the dry ingredients are combined with eggs to form a dough.

The rest of the wet ingredients are then added to thin the batter to a loose enough consistency to spread easily. The batter is added, one ladle at a time, to a hot, greased pan, cooked until golden, then flipped. In older versions of crêpe recipes, beer or wine was used instead of milk. Buckwheat flour is often used as well, specifically in making a Breton Galette. A crêperie may be a takeaway restaurant or stall, serving crêpes as a form of fast food or street food, or it may be a more formal sit-down restaurant or café. Crêperies can be found throughout France and many other countries, especially in Brittany. French cake made of many crêpe layers.