Hacker News: bkazez

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:08:15 +0000

Ah, I know about these big tall pancakes! I've had something like that in the Netherlands and grew up eating something like it too.

I'll soon add a fluffiness slider back in so that at the lowest end, it tries to produce something close to crêpes, and you can tell me if it is like the Swedish recipes. Thanks for the international perspective!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 08:30:16 +0000

Love it, thanks! I used to have a "fluffiness" slider that I could bring back to power this. I haven't researched Swedish pancakes yet but are they leavened at all?

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:09:19 +0000

Hilarious, thanks for pointing me to that!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:07:43 +0000

Haha, just for you - check out the new checkbox at the bottom of the form:

https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/recipes/pancakes/?have=&eg...

I'll leave the rounding of the absurdly precise ingredients to you. :)

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:59:08 +0000

Thanks a lot! Good idea re bread - can you link me to your favorite more general recipes that show all the extremes/variables? I've skimmed some bread textbooks re enriched doughs and have made some Italian breads with sourdough starters, enriched doughs like challah, and once tried the NYT Dutch oven bread, but I don't make bread as often as I make pancakes.

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:56:08 +0000

Thanks! The layout was inspired by the way my mother recopied her recipes. When I first saw how most recipe books wrote recipes, I was so confused! As for baseline ingredients, it's basically (any liquidy dairy) + (everything else in the recipe). I'll think on how to present this better, thanks for the feedback!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:53:35 +0000

Thanks, I'm working on this next - stay tuned or join the mailing list (will send a very occasional message about new recipes)!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:02:18 +0000

Haha, already researched the thermometer but haven't pulled the trigger yet! https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/cooking/ir-thermometer/

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 04:27:04 +0000

Good to know - I used to have a crispness slider but I removed it since I loved the pancakes at the current crispness. Contrary to the overcontrasted photo, they actually have just a very fine bit of crisp layer. That said, I know that typical American diner pancakes are very soft through, which means people must enjoy them that way too. I can bring back the crispness if other people like their pancakes soft!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 04:20:58 +0000

Hahaha, glad you're enjoying it as much as I did! I will have to add a crispness slider and then validate it with expensive audio equipment.

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 03:44:15 +0000

I feel your pain - dealt with a lot of those calculations so the calculator could avoid powders!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 03:06:57 +0000

Added! Let me know how it turns out! https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/recipes/pancakes/?have=lab...

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:58:15 +0000

Good idea, added! If you have only vegan dairy checked, it'll go for vegan butter too. :)

https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/recipes/pancakes/?have=soy...

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 02:55:36 +0000

Done, let me know how it turns out! https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/recipes/pancakes/?have=pla...

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 01:44:25 +0000

For sure - if you check "milk" and "lemon" and select maximum tang, you'll get nice tangy pancakes. I opted away from vinegar due to taste but would be curious to hear if someone tests vinegar vs lemon!

New comment by bkazez in "Show HN: I Derived a Pancake"

bkazez — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:41:46 +0000

Thanks! It's entire chunks of fat from a Berkshire pig. Lard works too and is what you get when you render pork fat, but the rendering removes some flavor. I'll update the recipe.

Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

bkazez — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:42:42 +0000

After 25 years of making other people's pancake recipes - always yearning for more tang, more fluff, and more predictability - I decided to derive the pancake recipe from the chemistry.

You mark checkboxes for what you have on hand (ricotta, sour cream, kefir, buttermilk, yogurt, cottage cheese, lemon, cream of tartar, etc.) and it computes the best recipe based on targets for acid, fat, salt, sugar, and CO2.

My particular favorite are the yeast-raised lemon ricotta kefir pancakes - the best I've ever had.

The math is done in a small pure-ESM library: ingredient composition to component masses and acid moles, a stoichiometry layer, and a bisection solver for the target deficits.

I'm not a chemist, so if something is off, tell me and I will fix it!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408854

Points: 270

# Comments: 110

New comment by bkazez in "The Synology End Game"

bkazez — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 17:51:56 +0000

I do video postproduction and am trying to archive/backup 100-250GB of large files per month. Ended up very slowly rsyncing to Synology NAS, confirming checksums with another script, using Synology onboard stuff to backup to AWS, and dealing with all the totally random hard drive noise.

If I want to work on one of these old projects, I have to download it locally so 4K editing works.

Meanwhile my old projects back when I used different software are impossible to open.

I have spent days setting up all this junk, HATE the Synology UI, and regret it all.

What’s the better solution? Just a bunch of RAIDs that I connect to with USB??

New comment by bkazez in "Why is zero plural? (2024)"

bkazez — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 12:14:42 +0000

“Sans personne” means “without anyone” and has no “ne”.

New comment by bkazez in "The Tsunami of Burnout Few See"

bkazez — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 18:04:40 +0000

> Burnout isn't well-studied or understood. It didn't even have a name when I first burned out in the 1980s.

Check Wikipedia: “Staff Burnout: Job Stress in the Human Services” was published in 1980, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory was published in 1982.

> We don't bother collecting data on why people quit, or why people burn out, or what conditions eventually break them.

A quick search of academic literature shows this is not true.