This article doesn’t contain enough pancake references, so here it goes: you don’t spend all morning speculating if the pan is too hot, not hot enough, under greased, over greased; batter too thick, too wet, not sitting long enough; you just poor the first-pancake and then figure out what needs to change for the next one.

Sure, there is an appropriate baseline of necessity for even that first pancake: you need the ingredients, a pan, a stovetop, a paid up gas bill, and a basic literacy for the recipe; but the absence of any one of those would moot the entire endeavor and thus aren’t open to speculation