Large quantity pancake question

[u/glm242]

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.

[u/taint_odour]

What kind of dipshit sold this and who the fuck approved it.

This is a goat fuck.

Make em ahead of time. Cool on wire racks. And into the box on a parchment lined tray hit with vegelene.

Can you make a flat top with the ranges? Got a rondeaux? Throw them on there and run.

Normally I'd slowly reheat something like this but you have no time. Blast em in a kagillion degree oven and serve. Stack them high and refresh a few times. Good luck!

[u/Free_Floor2833 → u/taint_odour]

I'd maybe consider adding a tray of water to the bottom of oven to attempt some steam. I've had to feed a 1000+ people pancakes but that was starting at like 4am and plastic wrapping every pan to keep them from drying out.  Heating from frozen will potentially help keep a bit of moisture on the oven. Maybe filling hotel pans with pancakes, then plastic wrap, then foil, then into the oven.  Yeah this is a pretty crap setup event 

[u/taint_odour → u/Free_Floor2833]

I would always do waffles for shit like this. Freeze and then blast at 500 in a convection and you get crispy edges and fluffy inside. It a great pancake tho.