Sourdough crêpes suzette

Recipe from It's Alive | Bon Appétit

If you haven’t seen it before, Bon Appétit has a youtube series called “It’s Alive” that’s great. For Easter morning, I recreated a recipe from the show by Claire Saffitz for sourdough crepes with a beurre Suzette sauce.

The video on youtube has a link to a basic non-sourdough crepes and Suzette sauce recipe, but the method Claire uses is a bit different. She’s rather distracted throughout the video, so I had to do a bit of my own interpretation.

They turned out great! Here’s what I ended up doing:

Ingredients

Crepes

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 130g flour (~1 cup)
• big pinch of salt
• 1 ¼ tablespoon sugar
• 4 eggs
• 140g sourdough starter (100% hydration, or equal parts flour + water)
• 1 cup soy milk

Suzette sauce

• Zest of 2 oranges
• Juice of 2 oranges (~1 cup)
• ⅔ cup sugar
• ⅔ cup butter (cold) cut into small pieces
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• a couple shots of 80 proof orange liqueur

Method

The evening before

Brown the butter

1. Brown the butter for the crepes in a small saucepan
   Start at medium-high heat until the butter is fully melted and starts boiling, monitoring closely and stirring often, then turned down to medium heat. Try to keep the heat high enough that the butter will boil quickly with no agitation.
2. When you see brown bits in a golden foam, take off the heat and set aside to cool

Prepare crepe batter

1. Whisk together flour, salt, sugar in a mixing bowl
2. Add eggs, sourdough starter, and half of the milk
3. Whisk until smooth, adding the remainder of milk until fairly thin
4. Slowly pour in butter while whisking
5. Let sit out until you go to bed (a couple of hours), then put in refridgerator (I transferred from the mixing bowl to a smaller container)

Day of

Make crepes

1. Take batter out of fridge and re-mix if separated
2. Heat non-stick pan over medium high heat with a half to full tablespoon of butter
3. Pour ~¼ cup of batter into one half of the pan and swirl to coat entire pan
   A lot of liquid butter/oil on the pan makes swirling evenly harder, which is why non-stick is important. You shouldn’t see much excess liquid batter moving around the pan after it’s fully coated.
4. Cook on one side until the underside just starts to brown
   You can tell it’s ready when the edges start pulling away from the pan and develop some color. Depending on heat, this takes around 30 seconds to a minute.
5. Flip and cook other side
   This side should only take 10 seconds or so, but leaving on longer doesn’t hurt, especially if the first side is still pale. Your first crepe is always going to be a bit weird, since the heat is usually not quite right.
6. Store crepes piled up on a plate

Make buerre for sauce

This base mixture of butter, sugar, and flavor will be used both for caramelizing the crepes and for the sauce itself.

1. Mix a few tablespoons of the orange zest with vanilla in a small bowl
2. Add sugar and rub together until evenly colored and disbursed
3. Add butter pieces and mix well

Caramelize crepes

1. Add about a tablespoon of the prepared buerre and a half tablespoon of orange juice to heated pan over medium high heat
   Mix around to melt butter and everything should boil up immediately and start caramelizing
2. Caramelize It will become sticky and start to darken (although it’s hard to see). Sugar should be fully dissolved, no crystals visible. This is quick, it only takes 30 seconds or so.
3. Quickly coat both sides of the crepe in the caramel
   Dip first side in quickly in order to have enough left for the second side. When you coat the second side, leave in the pan
4. “Fry” each side of the crepe until dark golden and caramelized
   Wait until good color here, they’ll develop a much better texture and flavor.
5. In pan, fold crepe in half twice to form a quarter circle, remove, and set aside
6. Repeat with each crepe

Make sauce and flambe

Work four crepes at a time here to create the final product.

1. Add ~¼ cup orange juice, ~2 tablespoons liqueur, a pinch of orange zest, and ~½ cup prepared buerre to your still-hot pan
2. Stir and melt. Let this boil away until it thickens slightly
   You should be able to scrape a silicon spatula through and not see the liquid fill in the space immediately. This takes about a minute.
3. Add four still-folded crepes into the saucepan and swirl to coat
4. Remove from heat, pour 1 to 2 tablespoons more liqueur on top, and carefully set on fire
5. Agitate over heat until flame subsides
6. Slide onto plate and serve hot

Photos