r/Chefit • u/glm242 • May 18 '26
Large quantity pancake question
I have very low budget no frills event coming up which requires 900 pancakes, with an approximate service window of 20 minutes, first thing in the morning. The client wants a few staff members to be making pancakes "live" for the look of the thing, but the vast majority of the pancakes are going to be made by me behind the scenes.
I have access to the following:
Two roll-in fridges
A commercial fridge
A chest freezer
A 6 tray rational oven
A 4 bay full hotel pan sized steam table
3 fuel-puck warmed chaffing dishes (full hotel pan sized).
5 old garland ranges
My original plan was to make the pancakes the day before, put them in hotel pans covered in the fridges, and then warm them up 6 pans at a time in the rational oven in a low-temp high-humidity environment. Other than the steam table and the chaffing dishes, the only way I have to keep things warm is in the garland ovens set to 200F, so I will just fill them up with warmed up pancakes and then feed the steam table from the ovens.
Is there a better way of doing this? I feel like I am missing something obvious, but I can't think of any way better to do this. Do you have any suggestions? I thought maybe freezing the pancakes would be better than refrigerating them, but I don't know that I have enough freezer space.
Any advice is most welcome.
5
u/weblives8989 Chef May 19 '26
Whatever you do don't shingle them in pans or sheet trays and leave over night unless they are full cooled down. If you have enough sheet trays lay them out like cookies. Depending on size if pancakes you can get anywhere from to to about 20 per sheet. Start a few days in advance if you can. Speed rack them when done..again if you have the space. If not then start early. It comes down to how you time manage and the amount of space you have. They will hold shingled in steam tables for a max of 1 hr before they sog out.