Hayden Zehrung

Hayden Zehrung

“It’s all down to the eggs,” says Hayden as she vigorously mixes her ingredients together. Hayden generally whisks her eggs before pouring them into her batter for homogeneity but on this day she’s experimenting. She has separated the egg whites and is now combining them into her powders. “Too frothy and you end up with Japanese soufflés…” Hayden has trailed off trying desperately, I learn later, to remember if she had added baking soda, without which she’d have crepes. If you ask about using something other than wheat flour, Hayden will correct you. She informed me that if she was to use cornmeal, they’d be johnnycakes. Additionally, a flapjack is made of rolled oats and baked in an oven not in a pan. It is an education in itself as Hayden gets more involved in her cooking concerning the minutia in naming that I had previously thought of as interchangeable words. A pancake isn’t a hotcake, but they’re all griddlecakes apparently. I tried furiously to note the differences but may have mixed them up.

“Francis A. Johnson was the OG, he’s my inspiration.” I don’t know what Hayden is referencing and she quickly informs me. Francis A. Johnson started and worked on for years what would be the largest ball of twine by one man. Specifically sisal twine – these things matter. Hayden needed to spell and define sisal for me. There was a competing ball in Kansas but it has been added to continuously by anyone who wishes, it is no longer a spherical ball. Therein lies the heart in Hayden’s endeavor. She can’t match the resources of an entire community like Rochdale, but she can hit an impressive number herself. Hayden will one day flip the world’s largest pancake by a single person. “Edible,” she corrects me, “the world’s largest edible pancake flipped by a single person.”

The day I interviewed her wasn’t an attempt in itself, she was in the proving stages, perfecting the batter mix. The difficulty Hayden faces is a physics problem combined with cooking ability. The pancake must cook enough that it can be flung into the air, rotate a full 360 degrees, then another 180 degrees to land uncooked side down. She thinks she has the technique down, the arm strength, and the optimal pan. It’s the batter that concerns her right now, her last attempts broke up upon hoist, splattering her witnesses with half-baked sponge. It would be easier if it was the highest flip she was aiming for, “pikelets” she whispers. Her undergrad degree in microbiology from Oklahoma University in Norman, OK has, so far, been of minimal help in this endeavor. She thinks that she’s getting closer with every attempt and has sworn me to secrecy as to what she uses to grease her pans. For Hayden, for now, it’s all down to the eggs.