Pancakes Around the World: 15 Varieties You Should Know

Every culture with access to grain, water, and fire invented some version of a pancake. The concept is older than leavened bread, older than ovens, older than written history. Archaeological evidence from 30,000-year-old stone tools suggests early humans ground wild grains and cooked them on hot rocks. That's a pancake.

What changed across 30 millennia isn't the idea, it's the grain, the fat, the filling, and the technique. A French crepe and an Ethiopian injera share DNA but look nothing alike. Here are 15 varieties worth knowing.

1. French Crepes

Paper-thin, made from wheat flour, eggs, milk, and butter. The batter rests at least 30 minutes (some chefs insist on overnight) to let the flour fully hydrate. You swirl it in a hot buttered pan and flip when the edges lift. Our crepe recipe covers the technique, but the real skill is the wrist flick.

Crepes originated in Brittany, the northwest region of France, where buckwheat crepes (galettes) predated wheat versions by centuries. Buckwheat grew in Brittany's poor soil where wheat wouldn't. The wheat crepe became popular in Paris in the 20th century. Sweet filling for dessert crepes, savory for galettes. The distinction still holds.

Ken Albala's Pancake: A Global History (2008) notes that crepe stands appeared on Paris streets in the 1920s, making crepes one of the earliest modern street foods in Europe.

2. Russian Blini

Small, thick, yeasted buckwheat pancakes traditionally served during Maslenitsa (Butter Week), the week before Lent. The yeast gives them a slight tang and a spongy texture that's completely different from a quick-leavened pancake.

Blini are almost always topped rather than filled. Sour cream, smoked salmon, and caviar are the classic toppings. The pancakes themselves are intentionally bland, a vehicle for what goes on top.

Traditional blini use a mix of buckwheat and wheat flour. Pure buckwheat blini are darker and earthier. The yeast rises for 2 to 3 hours before cooking, which puts them somewhere between a pancake and a bread.

3. Ethiopian Injera

A large, spongy, sourdough flatbread made from teff flour, a tiny grain native to the Ethiopian highlands. Injera isn't cooked on a griddle. It's poured onto a clay plate called a mitad, covered, and steamed. The result is a pancake with a thousand tiny holes on the surface, almost like a crumpet.

Teff is unusual. It's the smallest grain in the world, about 1 mm in diameter, and it's naturally rich in iron and calcium. The batter ferments for 2 to 5 days before cooking, developing the sour flavor that's central to Ethiopian cuisine.

Marcus Samuelsson writes in The Soul of a New Cuisine (2006) that injera serves as both plate and utensil. You tear off a piece, use it to scoop stew (wat), and eat them together. There's no silverware. The injera is the silverware.

The fermentation process uses wild yeast and Lactobacillus bacteria. The longer it ferments, the more sour. Fresh injera (1-2 days of fermentation) is mild. Three-day injera has real bite.

4. Indian Dosa

A thin, crispy crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and urad dal (black gram lentils). The batter soaks overnight, then ferments for 8 to 12 hours until it doubles in volume and smells faintly sour.

The fermentation produces CO2 that lightens the batter and lactic acid that adds tang. When the batter hits a hot, oiled cast iron griddle (tawa), it crisps almost instantly. The center stays soft while the edges become shatteringly crunchy.

Masala dosa, stuffed with spiced potato filling, is the most famous variety. But there are dozens: rava dosa (semolina), neer dosa (rice flour and water, no fermentation), pesarattu (green gram), and uttapam (thick, with vegetables pressed into the surface).

Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food (2014) traces dosa to ancient Tamil Nadu, with references in Sangam literature dating to the 1st century AD. It's one of the oldest continuously prepared pancake varieties in the world.

5. Japanese Souffle Pancakes

Impossibly tall, jiggly, and light. The batter is a standard egg yolk, milk, and flour mixture, but the egg whites are whipped into a stiff meringue and folded in. They're cooked covered on the absolute lowest heat for 12-15 minutes per side.

Our souffle pancake recipe details the technique. The key innovation is partially freezing the egg whites before whipping, which produces stiffer peaks and a more stable foam.

These became a global trend around 2018-2019 when videos of jiggly pancakes went viral. But they've been served at Japanese kissaten (coffee shops) since at least the 1970s. Gram Cafe in Osaka, which limits production to 20 servings per time slot, three times per day, helped ignite the international craze.

Naomichi Ishige's History and Culture of Japanese Food (2001) connects Japanese pancake culture to yoshoku (Western-influenced Japanese cooking) that emerged during the Meiji era (1868-1912).

6. Korean Hotteok

Yeasted dough stuffed with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and crushed nuts, then fried flat until the outside is crispy and the filling has melted into hot syrup. Our hotteok recipe captures the technique, including the critical step of pressing the dough flat after flipping, not before.

Hotteok arrived in Korea through Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century (the name derives from the Chinese "huo shao"). Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking (2015) describes regional variations. Seoul-style hotteok is thin and crispy. Busan-style is thicker, sometimes stuffed with seeds and honey. Street vendors in Busan add sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame to the filling.

The dough uses a mix of all-purpose flour and sweet rice flour (glutinous rice flour). The sweet rice flour gives the dough its distinctive chewy quality. Without it, you're making a filled bread roll, not hotteok.

7. Okonomiyaki (Japan)

The name translates roughly to "grilled as you like it." A thick, savory pancake from Osaka and Hiroshima made with a batter of flour, eggs, grated nagaimo (mountain yam), dashi stock, and shredded cabbage. Lots of cabbage. The cabbage-to-batter ratio is around 3:1.

Osaka-style mixes everything together. Hiroshima-style layers the ingredients: batter, cabbage, pork, noodles, egg, each component cooked separately and stacked. Hiroshima-style is the taller, more dramatic version.

Toppings are non-negotiable: okonomiyaki sauce (similar to Worcestershire but sweeter), Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie), bonito flakes (which dance in the heat), and aonori (green seaweed powder). The bonito flakes moving on the hot surface make it look alive.

8. Pupusas (El Salvador)

Thick, hand-formed corn masa cakes stuffed with cheese, beans, pork (chicharron), or a combination. The dough is patted flat by hand (the sound it makes, "pup pup pup," is supposedly the origin of the name), filled, sealed, and cooked on a hot comal.

Pupusas are El Salvador's national dish, declared a cultural heritage food by the Salvadoran government in 2005. November's second Sunday is National Pupusa Day.

The filling melts inside the thick corn shell. They're served with curtido (a fermented cabbage relish similar to sauerkraut but with oregano and chili) and a thin tomato salsa. The curtido provides acid and crunch against the rich, starchy pancake.

9. Vietnamese Banh Xeo

A turmeric-yellow rice flour crepe filled with shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts, cooked until the edges shatter. "Banh xeo" means "sizzling cake," named for the sound the batter makes hitting the hot oiled pan. Our banh xeo recipe covers the full technique.

The batter uses rice flour, turmeric, and coconut milk. The coconut milk fat is what makes the crepe crispy instead of chewy. You eat it by tearing off pieces, wrapping them in lettuce and fresh herbs (mint, Thai basil, cilantro), and dipping in nuoc cham.

Southern Vietnamese banh xeo are large, plate-sized. Central Vietnamese versions (banh khoai) are smaller and thicker. The southern version uses more coconut milk and is crispier.

10. Dutch Baby (United States/Germany)

An oven-baked pancake that puffs dramatically in a hot cast iron skillet, then collapses into a custardy bowl when it cools. Our Dutch baby recipe is one of the simplest on the site: eggs, flour, milk, butter, oven. That's it.

Despite the name, Dutch babies are American. They originated at Manca's Cafe in Seattle in the early 1900s. The owner's daughter allegedly couldn't pronounce "Deutsch" (German) and said "Dutch" instead. The "baby" part referred to the smaller, individual-sized portions.

The puff comes from steam and egg protein expansion, not chemical leavening. There's no baking powder or soda. The eggs do all the structural work, similar to a popover or Yorkshire pudding.

11. Swedish Pannkakor

Thin, eggy, and buttery. Closer to a crepe than an American pancake but with more egg and more butter in the batter. Swedish pannkakor are traditionally served rolled with lingonberry jam and powdered sugar.

Swedes eat pannkakor for Thursday dinner, following an old Catholic tradition of eating a rich meal before Friday's fast. The tradition persists even though the religious reason is largely forgotten. Thursday is pannkaksdag (pancake day) in many Swedish households.

The batter includes melted butter stirred directly in, not just for greasing the pan. This makes the pancakes richer than French crepes and gives them a slightly golden color even before they hit the heat.

12. Welsh Crempog

Small, thick, yeasted pancakes from Wales, traditionally cooked on a bakestone (a flat stone heated over an open fire). The yeast makes them spongier and tangier than quick-leavened pancakes.

Crempog differ from English crumpets primarily in thickness and density. They're eaten stacked with salted butter between layers, similar to how you'd butter a stack of toast. Vinegar is sometimes added to the batter for extra tang. Buttermilk versions exist in some regions.

13. Austrian Kaiserschmarrn

The name means "emperor's mess." A thick, sweet pancake batter, sometimes with raisins soaked in rum, cooked in butter, then torn into irregular pieces with two forks while still in the pan. The torn pieces caramelize on their newly exposed surfaces.

Kaiserschmarrn is associated with Emperor Franz Joseph I, though the exact origin story varies. One version says his cook ruined a crepe intended for the Empress and tore it apart in frustration. The Emperor liked the result.

It's served in a pile, dusted with powdered sugar, with plum compote (zwetschkenroster) on the side. It's technically a dessert in Austrian restaurants, but Austrians eat it as a main course, especially after hiking.

14. Moroccan Msemen

Square, flaky, laminated flatbreads made by repeatedly folding an oiled dough, similar to the technique for making croissants but without the long chilling. The result is a layered pancake that tears apart in sheets.

Msemen (also spelled m'semen or rghaif) are cooked on a flat griddle with oil, not butter. The folding creates air pockets between layers. They're eaten for breakfast in Morocco, sometimes with honey and butter, sometimes stuffed with a spiced meat and onion filling (then called rghaif farcis).

The dough uses a combination of fine semolina and all-purpose flour. The semolina gives msemen their slightly gritty, crispy texture, distinguishing them from the pure-flour crepes of French tradition.

15. Cornmeal Johnnycakes (United States)

The oldest pancake in the Americas. Johnnycakes are made from stone-ground cornmeal, water, salt, and sometimes a bit of milk. No wheat flour. No eggs. No leavening. Just corn, hydrated with boiling water and fried in bacon fat or butter.

The Narragansett people made these long before European colonization. The name probably derives from "journey cake" (a food that traveled well) or from the Shawnee word "jonikin." Rhode Islanders have argued about the correct thickness, recipe, and even spelling (johnnycake vs. johnny cake vs. jonnycake) for centuries. The Rhode Island General Assembly debated it in the 1940s.

The boiling water step is critical. It partially gelatinizes the cornmeal starch, turning it from gritty powder into a cohesive batter. Cold water won't work. You'll get a sandy, crumbling mess.

What connects them all

These 15 pancakes span 6 continents, dozens of grains, and thousands of years of food history. What connects them is the simplest idea in cooking: grain mixed with liquid, cooked on a hot surface. No oven required. No special equipment. Just a flat, hot thing and a batter.

That's probably why every culture invented one. A pancake is the first thing humans would have cooked once they figured out how to grind grain and build a fire. The rest is variation.