de Buyer Blue Carbon Steel Crepe & Tortilla Pan - 9.5” Diameter, 7.75” Cooking Surface - Ideal for Making & Reheating Crepes, Tortillas & Pancakes - Naturally Non-Stick Finish - Made in France

I use this pan every day since I bought it 6 years ago and it's Fantastic! This is one of those work for a lifetime pans. It's Perfect size for 3 egg omelettes. 2 works fine but 3 is optimal. 4 is fantastic too but requires you to push the eggs in on the sides so you can cook it evenly since it will be thicker. Over easy, no problem, sauteing veggies, great, scrambled, she got you. perfect flat bottom and lip edge for getting in there on those beautiful Omelettes. No Non-stick garbage to flake off and ingest for some good ol fashion Dupont Poisoning. Lighter than Cast iron for quick heating and better maneuverability. Easier to clean requires less frequent seasoning. At one point I was trying to leave it in the sink if something stuck to it with some water. Everything would come off easily and I'd just season it again. let it sit too long one day and it removed some of that dark bluish/blackish color in those spots so I don't do that anymore. Just looks more loved now.

I was looking for an alternative to non-stick dosa pans, but was hesitant initially. I thought it might be too heavy and too difficult to maintain. I am quite happy that I took a chance. I started by bungling the seasoning. I tried it on an portable induction cook top that I was using at the time when I purchased it (over 6 months ago). I did not realize that the coils in the cook top were much smaller than the diameter of the pan. So, my pan got seasoned in the middle and stayed blue around the edges/circumference. So, I decided to fix the issue on my glass-ceramic cook top. Except, I forgot it on an active burner for some time and came back to find that it spinned when I touched the handle - it seemed to have warped. But, is this pan indestructible or what? I tried to make a dosa, figuring it was worth at least a try since I had paid for it. Worked like a charm! The dosa came out nicely toasty and crispy with very little oil. The pan responds to heat changes very quickly allowing it cool down sufficiently to facilitate spreading the next dosa easily - so I do not need to use an onion or potato to cool down the surface like our mothers used to do. This is a crucial difference w.r.t. cast iron pans which always got overheated on my glass cooktop. For cleanup, I generally boil a cup of water in the microwave while cooking the last dosa. I pour the boiling water into the pan and scrape gently with my wooden spatula. I have used mild soap in the past. I always finish by cooking off any remaining moisture of on heat. Then I put a drop of oil on the pan and spread it around with a paper towel for a very thin layer. If you are sitting on the fence like I did for many months before I purchased this pan, I would recommend giving it a shot. Do wish it was larger though.

I recently took it into my head to start making crêpes and didn't have the proper pan (or for that matter, anything even close). I became familiar with the existence of this pan through the Williams-Sonoma catalog and, based on its glowing reviews, decided to see if I could pick it up for less. This pan doesn't have a high list regardless but at the time of this writing, Amazon's price is the lowest anywhere, even without the free shipping. :) This is a quality pan made of what's known as "blue steel"; according to Wikipedia, "bluing" is a manufacturer's process that partially protects carbon steel against potential rust. In order for this pan to be safely seasoned and used, the coating on the pan's cooking surface (which, as I understand it, is independent of the bluing process) must be removed. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IGNORING DE BUYER'S INSTRUCTIONS TO BOIL POTATO PEELS IN THE PAN PRIOR TO SEASONING IT WITH OIL. I mean it. When you see the sludge that comes off the surface of the pan and the color of those peelings, you'll be tempted to repeat that particular step. Go for it--I did (de Buyer has a video of the procedure on YouTube). Dispose of the peelings, rinse the pan THOROUGHLY with very hot water, and wipe it HARD with paper towels to remove as much sludge and bluing as possible. Heat oil (I used rice bran--very high smoke point and not too expensive) in the pan and keep it hot but not smoking for about five minutes, pour it out, and AGAIN wipe thoroughly with paper towels until the cooking surface no longer yields blue (don't worry about the underside unless you're planning to do some very funky frying) and rubbing in the oil will have given you a beautiful, glassy cooking surface. Your pan is on its way to being well-seasoned! You need only brush a little butter or other fat on your pan's surface to get started on your crêpe odyssey and your seasoning will just keep improving over time (as long as you don't burn it). DON'T RUSH THIS PROCESS. Just let it happen gradually. Bravo has a nice online video of Julia Child and Jacques Pépin making crêpes that renders the procedure virtually idiot-proof and is well worth watching. I do have a few minor complaints: this pan has a welded handle and de Buyer also manufactures what's essentially the identical pan with a riveted handle but it's only available in Europe; I'd like the option of a choice. Also, the booklet on the pan's handle and the protective cardboard sleeve provide different seasoning instructions (respectively, boiling vs. frying the potato peels); go with "boiling." This pan couldn't be more perfect for its intended purpose which isn't surprising considering that de Buyer has been manufacturing cookware, in France (NOT East Asia), since 1830. In fact, my very first batch of crêpes shot off the pan like hockey pucks which just emphasizes what other reviewers have noted: SEASON THE PAN ACCORDING TO DE BUYER'S INSTRUCTIONS. At some point, I intend to add the blini pan to my repertoire: de Buyer 5512.12 Professional Blinis Pan 4 3/4" 2.5 mm . If you want to make your own crêpes, I can't recommend this pan highly enough.

I've already reviewed this item but after receiving two faulty pans Amazon's customer service talked me into to give it one more try. I did and the results if possible are even worse. None of the reviewers complained about my problem but I find it very hard to believe that I'm the only person who received (now three in the row) this pan with a crooked handle. I'm a crepe guy and made many of them through the years. I believe that if properly seasoned iron pans work just fine. Unfortunately I've never got so far as trying it. All three pans arrived with their handle attached crooked, causing the pan out of balance even when empty, twisting out of your grip. I complained to Amazon's customer service about it and I have nothing but praise for the helpfulness of the persons manning the phones, and Amazon's return policy. Where the process completely breaks down is when a complaint is "elevated" to the special "investigating" section of Customer Service. If indeed there are such people. Despite seven (yes 7) complaints and just as many promises of following update about the results, not even a single time did any investigators called, sent email, or try to get to touch in me in any way. (Smoke signals, Morse code, carrier pigeons, etc., etc.) By far the most frustrating, to put it mildly, experience ever with Amazon customer service's "crack investigating team". If they were paid for their activities they did not earn any of it! Attached find my custom picture about the faulty pan with its crooked handle. If you can live with it give it a try, maybe you can use two hands to keep it straight even though it might be a bit warm. But if you'd rather have something that feels like a real pan you may want to look for something else. And to save yourself a lot of disappointment don't count for any help from Amazon's "investigation team". Cheers!

This is the budget offering from De Buyer, with thinner construction and a bit less fit n finish than stuff like Mineral B / Pro (iirc it's 2mm thickness vs 3mm on those higher tier offerings?). With that said, this is perfectly fine for intended use and is just as non-stick when seasoned. This is a pretty good size for omelettes, crepes, and tortillas. I'm not sure how much I would like the smaller size, but I guess for people wanting smaller pancakes and crepes it makes sense. If unsure, I would recommend this larger size since the price difference isn't very substantial either way and this size is more versatile. Some care tips: scrub it down very good when you initially receive it, then season it. To help develop the initial seasoning (after the recommended step of heating a thinly oiled pan up to smoking point / blackening surface), you can cook 2 half pound portions of beef each to help develop a better non-stick surface. You can try the potato skins method, but with the low flared sides some methods may be messier than others. Because the pan is a bit thin, it may heat up faster than you'd expect. To avoid warping issues and food sticking, do not overheat the pan. If your stovetop has 1-8 for heat settings for example, don't even think about putting this above like a 6. The same if you have different sized burners: please use an appropriate sized burner and don't nuke it on the big burner. If warping concerns you, then as previously mentioned the thicker construction lines Mineral B / Pro and I think Carbone are 3mm instead. For a pan such as this however, you typically don't need to be cooking at that high of a heat anyways so this pan thickness should be sufficient with the proper heat levels and knowledge. The thicker lines make more sense for the full sized skillets imo. For the money, a good pan if you're not careless with it. Nothing fancy but gets the job done.

**UPDATE May 2016*** I've owned this pan (and it's larger sibling) for 3.5 years and for the past 2 yrs have used it on my induction range. It continues to be one of my workhorses, my go-to pan for fried eggs, crepes and grilled sandwiches. Because it's only used over low to medium heat it's never blackened completely, but remains a motley blue/brown/black mess. That's ok, because it cooks and releases like a dream with a scant teaspoon of butter or oil. Note that if you want to use high heat, you're better off with a thicker carbon steel pan, like deBuyer's Mineral B line (3mm), to prevent warping. I have a pair of those skillets and have no qualms cranking the heat to sear a steak of make a crusty smash burger. This pan (2mm thick) will warp over high heat. Just don't, ok? Anyway, with my collection of carbon steel pans, I've no need at all for cast iron. These weigh less, season easier, are every bit as nonstick and easy to clean, and will never, ever crack no matter how many times you drop it on your tile floors. If carbon steel is good enough for my wok, it's perfect for skillets and crepe pans. *Original review* Having cooked on gas ranges most of my life, I faced a steep learning curve 2 years ago when we bought a home with an electric smooth-top range. I can cook on it, but I still struggle with it's lack of responsiveness to heat setting changes. I'm constantly moving pots and pans off the burner and back on while waiting for the heat level to come down, a real pain. So we're making the switch next year to induction, requiring a complete cookware replacement. I've got 10-yr-old Calphalon Tri Ply stainless steel pots and skillets and 2 Tramontina Pro cast aluminum nonstick skillets, all of which must go. Note that Calphalon Tri Ply is now made with magnetic steel and will work with induction, but older stuff does not. I don't like modern cast iron because it's not smooth, takes a long time to build up enough seasoning to become slick and it weighs a ton. Also, it's sides aren't flared like my Tramontina and Calphalon, making it hard to get a spatula under food and harder still to slide eggs onto a plate. So I purchased this de Buyer pan as my 'try me' piece. If it didn't perform I wasn't out a lot of money. Here's my first impression. This is the Force Blue crepe pan, 2mm thick, with a riveted handle. One nice feature is that the rivets are flat, like aircraft rivets, making for very smooth walls. Another reviewer complained that the bottom had some kind of ring that prevented it from sitting flat and caused oil to run out to the edges of the pan. Mine is perfectly flat on the bottom, but like all fry pans, oil will 'run' from the hotter middle of the pan to the cooler edges. This is normal. I followed the mfg. instructions, boiling potato peels in water (I did it for 10 full minutes), then scrubbing the pan with dish soap and drying thoroughly. After that step, I heated it on medium-high heat until it was good and hot, then poured in about a tablespoon of oil. I chose canola oil. It immediately began to smoke, so I turned the heat down to medium, picked up the pan and swirled the oil around to coat the sides of the pan. I had to keep repeating this, turn down heat, pick up pan, swirl, until finally I reached a medium-low heat setting (2 on my GE range) to keep the oil just below the smoke point. Altogether, about 5 minutes. Then I wiped the pan with a paper towel (use tongs!) to remove all the excess oil. Some of the oil had dripped over the side when I was doing the swirl thing, so I wiped the outside of the pan, too. I let the pan cool completely and seasoned it a second time. de Buyer doesn't say to do it a second time, but because I'd got a very thin coat of oil, I chose to repeat the process, knowing it wouldn't hurt. After all, seasoning builds up over time anyway. My pan looked dark and shiny, with 2 slightly dull spots in the middle. Using an oil with a higher smoke point would have been less hassle, but are you going to walk away from a pan with hot oil? So it was really no big deal. This morning I fried 2 eggs in it, one at a time. I set the burner to 5 (medium) and heated the cold pan. This took much less time than with my Calphalon steel, under 2 minutes. For the nonstick I add the butter to the cold pan. This crepe pan is a bit thinner than either of those, although still quite sturdy. I added a scant teaspoon of butter, turned the heat down a notch to 4, and added my first egg. I like my eggs over medium, and hate crispy edges. This pan made a perfect egg, in less time than my stainless steel or aluminum nonstick. So far, so good. At this point, I'd have added another teaspoon of butter to my stainless pan, otherwise the second egg would stick a little, just enough to cause some minor tearing. I should mention that this pan will hold two eggs, but they'll be crowded just a little. The larger size would easily accommodate two eggs for just a few dollars more. This morning, I didn't add any more butter, treating it as I would my Tramontina nonstick. The second egg didn't stick at all, cooked just as quickly as the first (about 3 minutes total) and slid right out of the pan onto my plate. With no egg left in the pan, I wiped it clean with a paper towel, put it back on the still-hot burner and let it sit to cool and dry. And did I mention that I used a metal spatula? I don't own a plastic one, haven't for years. Conclusions - Easier to season than cast iron Sits dead flat on my smooth-top range, even after boiling potato peels for 10 minutes (cast aluminum would warp on high heat) Performs like nonstick, only faster (perhaps because my nonstick skillets are heavy-duty and thicker than this one) Requires less oil than stainless steel. Cleans as easily as stainless and nonstick Turns out perfect eggs Handle didn't get hot, even during the initial cleaning (boiling potato peels). This may be because of the coating on the handle, which also means the handle won't rust. (Do NOT try to remove that coating, it's there for a reason) Can handle high heat better than heavy-duty aluminum (no warping) If you're looking to dump nonstick, this is an excellent choice, in my opinion, much better than buying new cast iron. At under $20, this is priced and performs comparably to my Tramontina Pro skillet, but I won't have to replace it every 3 years. It performs better than my Calphalon Tri Ply, based on needing less oil. It's also less expensive. All 3 pans are very good, but this one will survive the switch to induction. I'm sold! ***Update**** It's 3 months later and the pan just keeps getting better. I've been using it 2-3 times a week to fry my over medium eggs. To clean, I usually just wipe it with a paper towel, add a little oil, wipe it again and put it away. From time to time I use a scrubbie with hot water, dry it on the range, again followed by oil and last wipe. Today I decided to brave crepes for the first time in my life. My pan performed like a champ! I heated it to medium, added about a 1/4 teaspoon of oil, spread it with a metal spatula, then poured in the batter and swirled. About 30 seconds later, the edges of the crepe were pulling away from the pan. I slid the spatula under an edge and turned the crepe. It looked perfect. I had placed it a bit off-center when I turned it, but it didn't stick AT ALL. I just tilted the pan and it centered nicely. 20 seconds later, it was done. I slid it out of the pan and began crepe #2. Same result. For the 3rd, I added another couple DROPS of oil and swirled the pan. No sticking at all. I completed 3 more crepes with no further oil. My finished crepes were lacy, tender and golden, just like the pros make. Although I bought this pan for eggs, it's perfect for crepes, too. Next time I'll skip the spatula and just flip them with a wrist flick. If I were making crepes for a crowd, I'd use 2 pans, because the crepes truly do not stick, making it easy to turn the half-finished crepe into the 2nd pan to finish cooking, no spatula needed. It makes amazing grilled cheese sandwiches; the crust is shatteringly crisp, the best I've ever made. Hash browns? Fabulous, but I recommend a larger pan size for those. I've also used it to reheat and crisp up some pulled pork. I expected it to leave a bit of stuck-on food because of the high sugar content of the BBQ sauce, and it did. I scraped at the stuck-on mess with my spatula to little effect. Then I thought of deglazing it by pouring some water into the hot pan. Bingo! I poured about a 1/2 cup of water into it, lightly scraped with my spatula and the stuck-on bits came right up. After that, I wiped it dry, returned it to the heat to dry completely, then wiped it with a bit of oil. Note - this is NOT the same as running cool water over the pan or dropping the hot pan into a sink full of cold water. Doing that will warp your pan! The next morning my egg was perfectly lovely, with only a very slight bit of sticking. This happens once in a while. I slid the spatula under it to release the egg, then it slid around like it was on a skating rink. When I flipped the egg, the other side had no sticking whatsoever. The more I use this pan, the more I like it. It's inexpensive, is a non-stck workhorse, easy to season, easy to maintain. Practically perfect.

I unpacked and unwrapped my beautiful 6.5 inch French Blue Steel pan this morning and prepared it for first use. It was so easy! The pan is a good weight, just right, really! Not too heavy but also not too light. I understood from reading the instructions that this pan is coated with wax and the way to remove the wax is to run it under very hot water and then wipe it dry with paper towel. I didn't use any soap. Next, I put it on my induction cooker, coated it with ghee, and turned the cooker on to the medium high heat setting. Because induction heat cooks so quickly the ghee started to smoke after about 30 seconds and I could see the fat separate in different places. I used a basting brush (silicone won't melt!) to continue to baste the pan while it went through this seasoning process for maybe 3 or 4 minutes. I also turned on the vent fan because there was, initially, some smoke from the oil. I decided the seasoning process was complete when the oil no longer separated on the pan surface. I let the pan cool for about 30 seconds and then carefully wiped it out with paper towels (it was still quite hot). Now, I was ready to cook my fried eggs for breakfast! Again, I basted the pan lightly with ghee, turned on the heat, and cooked my over-easy eggs to perfection! Delicious, and no sticking to the pan! I used a metal spatula to transfer my eggs and then used a paper towel to wipe out the pan. I didn't think it needed to be washed. After brushing on a little more ghee I hung the pan up to rest alongside its culinary siblings! This was a super easy process and I will use my new steel pan for preparing eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, omelettes, crepes, hamburger... or whatever I want to cook in a small quantity. It's a fantastic tool and I'm so glad that Amazon offers this high quality blue steel pan. It's the kind of pan that, as long as I take care of it, my children will inherit it!

This 9.5 inch Du Buyer "Blue" crepe pan is quickly becoming my favorite carbon steel pan. I already own a couple of Du Buyer "Mineral B Pro" pans, which are great, but this "Blue" crepe pan is so useful and so inexpensive (about a third the cost of those Mineral B Pro pans on sale) that I have to admit to being a big fan. The "Blue" was easy to season, following YouTube-great "Uncle Scott's Kitchen" method of a single stovetop seasoning cycle and immediate and repeated cooking with it. It's makes awesome crepes (duh!), but it is also ideal for frying or scrambling eggs, whipping up French omelets, warming tortillas, and frying quesadillas. Conventional wisdom says to start one's carbon steel education with a heavy 11 or 12 inch skillet, which can be used to cook a wide variety of delicious dishes, but I'm going to suggest the newcomer follow a different path, buying this 9.5 inch crepe pan as his or her first carbon steel pan. You can learn how to season, clean, and cook with carbon steel, without spending a lot of cash, make some crepes, fry some eggs, warm some tortillas, and when you're up to speed, you can decide whether or not you want to shell out the big bucks for the heavier, more expensive pans. Even if you decide not to go all in, you'll have a handy little crepe pan, ready to whip up a stack of delicious 7.5 inch crepes. Mine lives on top of the range, ready for the next breakfast order.