How To Make the Best Popover Recipe - Through Her Looking Glass (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making popovers pop? ›

Because popovers rely on steam to rise — as opposed to baking powder, baking soda, or yeast — you want your batter warm when entering the oven. This King Arthur Flour article says it best: “The warmer your batter going into the oven, the more quickly it'll produce steam: simple as that.” Use room-temperature eggs.

Preheating your oven to the correct temperature is probably the most important thing you can do to ensure popover success. The hotter your oven, the higher your popovers will rise. Which makes sense: the faster liquid in the batter turns into steam, the more chance your popover has to expand before its crust sets.

There's just one thing that will make the popovers better, and that's time. The batter needs time to rest before baking so that it creates a more tender popover in the end. So, cover the batter and pop it into the refrigerator for at least an hour, but preferably overnight.

How to make popovers. Before we get started: all of your ingredients should be at warm room temperature. To warm ice-cold eggs from the fridge, place them in a cup of hot tap water for about 10 minutes.

Popovers are best served immediately. They will, unfortunately, begin to collapse after a few minutes outside of the oven. One way to help prevent this is to puncture the top and/or side of the popover with the tip of a small, sharp knife to help release some of the steam trapped inside.

Bread flour produces a popover that's 30 percent taller; weighing the flour ensures that the batter is always the right consistency for the best rise. Warming the milk leads to more oven spring.

Rule 6: Pierce each popover with a sharp, thin-bladed knife immediately after they are removed from the oven. This allows the steam to escape and will help keep the exterior crispy.

Oven temperatures can vary wildly, so check the popovers about 10 minutes or so before the baking time is up to see how brown they are. They should be very well-browned—peek through the glass on the oven door. Be sure not to underbake or the popovers will be soft and collapse after you take them out of the oven.

Should popover batter be lumpy? ›

Add the flour all at once. Whisk till all the big lumps disappear; smaller lumps are OK. Whisk in the butter, and let the batter rest for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the little lumps will have risen to the top.

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The room temperature of the batter, the heat of the pan, and high heat the oven are all what create the steam initially to get the batter to rise, then the bake at 350°F sets the batter and creates the crispy outside. Once cooked, we want to pierce the popover rolls with a knife and get them out of the pan.

If you add more flour, the batter will be heavier and the popovers won't rise quite as high. The lower the rise, the more dense the bread filling and the smaller the hollow center.

If your popovers lose volume when they come out of the oven, they are probably underbaked. When these airy baked goods aren't cooked enough, too much steam stays trapped inside. That moisture condenses once they're removed from the oven, causing them to collapse.

SF Gate claims that if your bakes are flat and dense, rather than tall and puffy, you must adjust your ingredient ratios. Usually, the batter consists of a simple egg, milk, and flour mix but if you add too much flour, the batter will be too dense and your popovers won't have the power to rise.

If you use a pan with smaller wells, you can fill them a bit fuller, but don't fill them all the way to the rim. And be sure to grease not only the cups, but the surface around them as well. The popovers are going to balloon up and over the edges of the wells.

Why do popover batters contain so much liquid? It allows the popovers to be leavened with steam, creating the characteristic large cavity in the center. It also allows gelatinization of the starch during baking, which is indicated in part by the soft, gel-like texture in the inside walls of a baked popover.

According to The Boston Globe, popovers that are under-baked retain too much steam inside the bread. This steam helps them puff up beautifully when baking, but if the bread is removed before the steam has time to cook out it will condense again. This is why you see popovers fall even after you think they're done.