How to avoid air bubbles forming when baking a pancake in the oven?
I like to bake a pancake in the oven, instead of in a frying pan atop the stove. The basic recipe is the same (flour, milk, eggs, butter, salt; mix, pour into a roasting pan, bake in the oven at medium heat) but since one uses all of the batter at once, it ends up being thicker.
However, it seems that every single time I do it, after about half the time in the oven or maybe ten minutes, rather large air bubbles start to form as the batter begins to set. At that point I usually reach in with a knife to pop them, but I'd like to be able to avoid that.
What can I do to reduce the chance of those air bubbles forming in the first place?
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It's probably the thickness.
I do bake pancakes in the oven (because 10 or more at a time without flipping is a lot less bother than standing in front of a pan to tend perhaps 3 at once if small) and I do so by pouring normal pancake size and thickness amounts onto parchment or parchment equivalent (Silpat, et al) on baking sheets.
They behave pretty much the way they behave in a pan on the top of the stove. No outsize bubbles, in my experience.
Notably, without any air bubbles you'd have something not much like a pancake, where small air (or CO2) bubbles typically from baking powder or baking soda and acid, or beaten egg, are what makes the pancake fluffy and risen, rather than resembling a dense slab of unleavened bread.
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Two techniques from baking cakes might help with your baked pancakes:
After you pour the batter into the pan, let it sit for five minutes before putting in the oven. This helps the batter to settle. I've seen this suggestion when mixing pancake batter for pan-frying, too -- mix the batter, let it sit, and then cook the pancakes.
Before putting the pan in the oven, pick it up and drop it onto your counter from a height of a couple inches. (This assumes a metal pan, not glass.) Repeat a few times. This pushes bubbles that are forming immediately up and out.
I haven't baked pancakes; I've done #1 for pan-cooked pancakes and #2 for cakes and cornbread, so I'm sort of combining approaches here.
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