Sourdough Pancakes
Buttermilk Pancakes had been the daily pancakes served on our menu since the opening, in 2008, until the Covid hit, beginning of March 2020. Buttermilk pancakes requires whipped up eggs whites for their fluffiness, which would flatten down if the batters don’t get used soon enough. In order to accommodate the downturn influx of customers due the shelter-in-place, we switched to Sourdough Pancakes, utilizing sourdough as a rising element, which doesn’t flatten down over time.
Folks who don’t like sourdough, I’m one of them, usually get discouraged by the term “sourdough”. However, it doesn’t taste tangy as sourdough breads often do, yet it maintains its chewiness, and fluffy! Unsurprisingly, the sourdough pancakes took on its own place as one of the favorite items among others.
Sourdough Pancakes
Ingredients
Wet
- 2 tbs sourdough starter
- 1 each egg
- 1 cup milk of choice
- 1 ts vanilla extract
- 1 tbs unsalted butter, melted
Dry
- 1 cup AP flour
- 1 tbs sugar
- 1/4 ts kosh salt
- 1 ts baking powder
- 1/2 ts baking soda
Other
- butter for cooking & serving
- maple syrup, or other syrup of choice for serving
- fruits of choice for topping
Instructions
- Mix the wet & dry ingredients separately
- Slowly fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, care to not mix too much
- Let the batter rest for an hour (up to overnight)
- Over medium high heat, butter hot skillets, ladle in batter (keep in mind that flipping smaller pancakes would be much easier), wait until the edges bubble up, flip pancakes, wait for a minute or two, touch middle of pancakes: if it's firm, it's ready! Served with your favorite syrup/jam and fruit — Enjoy!!
Notes
- We use buttermilk at the restaurant, but after testing with a lactose-free 2% milk, we find that the taste doesn’t seem to be altered much, so feel free to use whatever milk available in your fridge and let us know how does it come out?
- As for sourdough starter, unfortunately, we don’t remember exactly how we started our sourdough batch, but we found this link on Youtube by Brian Lagerstrom, who meticulously described how he started and maintained his — hope it would help for those who don’t have a batch of sourdough living in your refrigerator. One note though, we don’t maintain ours as often as Brian — my husband bakes bread once a week and that is his maintenance. He uses about a cup of starter for his bread and replaces it with fresh water and ap flour; he then loosely covers the sourdough and leave it out on the counter overnight, then keep it tightly covered in the fridge until he uses it again. Our sourdough starter seems to be doing fine.
