Recipe of the Week: Sourdough Adventure: Pancakes

I like the idea of making my own breads now that I have time - so in early April I started my own sourdough ‘starter’ using instructions from Mike Avery’s Sourdough site. All you need is whole wheat flour and water! Everything worked very easily for me and I took one of the simplest paths possible through the instructions. I find that my two cup measure with a small plate on top is ideal while the starter is outside the refrigerator.

I very quickly got to the point I wanted to use it before I got into the mode of putting it into the refrigerator to slow down the growth enough that it didn’t need feeding every 12 hours. The first thing I attempted to make was pizza dough…and that didn’t work out so well. It was too dense. I’ve already found another recipe that I’ll try sometime soon. Pancakes were my first big success.

My basic recipe is

1 egg

2 tablespoons sweetener (sugar or honey…something sweet)

4 tablespoons olive oil

Dash salt

1 1/2 cups mature sourdough starter

1 teaspoon cinnamon

~~~~~

1 teaspoon soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon of warm water

In a large bowl or measuring cup with a spout (to make it easy to pour out the batter), mix sugar, egg, salt and olive oil. Mix in the sourdough starter and cinnamon. Add warm water or tea to get the right consistency for pancake batter. Set aside.

In a small bowl, dilute 1 teaspoon baking soda in 1 tablespoon of warm water. 

When ready to cook the sourdough pancakes, fold the baking soda/water mixture gently into the prepared pancake batter (do not beat). This will cause a gentle foaming and rising action in the batter. Let the mixture bubble and foam a minute or so to give the acid (in the starter) and the base (soda) time to react; this makes the air bubbles that produce pancakes with air bubbles rather than densely packed flour.

Cook on a hot griddle as other types of pancakes.

Note - Other optional ingredients could be added to the batter. Be creative. Some that I like (one at a time or in combinations): orange zest, chopped pecans, grated apples, or ginger. 

I'll continue to share my adventure with my sourdough starter. I'm working my way up to whole wheat loaves of bread and raisin buns like my grandmother used to make!