CALGARY - With a crowd cheering him on in a city known for its appetite for pancake breakfasts, Food Network host Bob Blumer set a Guinness world record Thursday for flipping flapjacks.
Working from buckets of pre-made batter that he poured and then flipped, Blumer got off to a slow start.
"The grills are really finicky. When you put down pancakes, their temperatures cool down, so you have to be fine-tuning them," he explained. "Every second you have waiting for a pancake to cook after you have laid the whole batch down is a second that you are losing."
Adding to the pressure was the fact Blumer chose to challenge the record during pancake prime time in Calgary - the annual Stampede and rodeo.
Blumer stood by anxiously as the Guinness representative checked his final 10 hotcakes for size and then measured the thickness.
It was just enough - the final count of 559 flapjacks flipped in one hour beat the old record by only four.
The previous record was set on June 23, 2006, by Steve Hamilton, a.k.a. Chris Cakes, at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla.
"I've never had this big a crowd and I've never felt so much pressure especially at the end," Blumer said. "I don't think there's ever been a challenge that I've wanted to succeed at as much as this one."
Blumer threw his hat into the air and sprayed water at the crowd of about 200 before hugging his crew.
"This is the first time I've attempted and won a world record. Last week I was in Nova Scotia entering a lobster-banding competition against all these salty-dog lobster fishermen."
Things didn't look too good for the host of "Glutton for Punishment" who seeks out epicurean challenges around the world. At the 30-minute mark, he was well behind the pace he needed. A large container of discarded pancakes - some not the right size and others too thick - sat at the table near the Guinness representative.
"He really had to do this by himself here. He was allowed to have a runner to bring the pancakes to me for counting but besides that it was pretty much a solo effort for Bob Blumer," said Danny Girton Jr., adjudication executive for Guinness World Records in North America.
"I have overseen other cooking-related records, but the pancakes is a first for me and it's really exciting," he added. "When you're caught up in the moment of judging a world record, you really have to focus and not get carried away."
Blumer had five days to prepare. He was anxious enough about winning that he had started picking through the pancakes in the discard pile and was planning to challenge whether they should be counted.
"I found some that seemed to be fine to me but I didn't want to be a sore sport. I was waiting until he got through and counted them all so I guess I did OK."
