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I have been working on perfecting my pancake recipe for my whole adult life. I’m not saying it’s perfect now, as I am constantly surprised by learning new things. However, I am extremely satisfied with this recipe. It combines several things I have learned. Things like:
- Make sure the griddle is solidly pre-heated
- Mix the wet and dry ingredients separately
- Use a Danish dough whisk to get the final combination mixed nicely, but without over-mixing
- Don’t be afraid to add a bit more liquid if the batter is thicker than you like
- If using freshly ground flour, you may have to slightly increase the amount of flour to get a good consistency
- Raw milk that has soured naturally makes a great substitute for buttermilk
- Patient supervision is key to proper cooking
- It is okay to flip a pancake more than once
- It doesn’t work well to increase a pancake recipe by more than double, as the bubbles tend to rise and leave the bottom batter without much leavening (see section of baking soda and baking powder after the recipe)
Here’s my sour dough discard pancake recipe:
Pre-heat griddle. I find the best temperature is one where water that is sprinkled on the griddle dances around. After doing this a few times, you should get an idea of the setting for your stove top or electric griddle and not have to test every time. I use a rectangular griddle that fits over two of my gas burners, so the heat is not completely evenly distributed, but once it is heated thoroughly and with some adjustments with flipping the pancakes, I get even cooking.
In a comparatively larger bowl combine
- about ½ cup of sour dough discard
- 1 cup of sour milk or buttermilk
- 1.5 Tablespoons of sugar or honey (I use turbinado sugar)
- ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 2 Tablespoons of oil (I use olive oil) or melted butter
- 1 large egg, slightly beaten
In a smaller bowl stir together
- 1 cup of flour (I use ½ unbleached white flour + slightly rounded ½ cup of freshly ground soft white wheat flour, aka pastry flour)
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ⅔ teaspoon salt (how much might depend on the exact type of salt you use)
Now add the dry ingredients to the larger bowl that already has the wet ingredients mixed in it. Use a Danish dough hook to mix, but leave it slightly lumpy. Don’t over mix or your bubbles that make nice fluffy pancakes will disappear! You can use a regular wooden spoon, but in my experience, it makes it harder to mix uniformly while still preserving the bubbles.
To cook your pancakes
Put about ⅓ of a cup of batter on the griddle for each pancake. You can make them larger, but that makes them harder to flip. Smaller is cute, but more time consuming. I like about 11 chocolate chips on each of my pancakes. The time to add them is on the uncooked side while the first side is cooking. I have tried adding chocolate chips to the batter, but they sink to the bottom. (I don’t put any syrup or jam on my pancakes. Just butter. My husband doesn’t care for chocolate chips in his and says they taste great with maple syrup)
When the edges of the pancake are just beginning to firm up and some of the bubbles around the edge have popped, it is usually a good time to flip the pancake over to cook the other side. If it isn’t as brown as you would like, just wait and flip it again later. To flip, you will learn the skill of quickly inserting a metal spatula with a narrow edge under the whole pancake in one fell-swoop. Then, with a flick or your wrist, flip it over to the other side. Continue to cook until browned to your liking and the middle is cooked through. If the middle springs back up when gently touched, it is probably cooked through.
Why both baking soda and baking powder?
It wasn’t until one of our daughters went to culinary school that I learned the difference between baking soda and baking powder. She explained it, then recommended one of her college textbooks, How Baking Works by Paul Figoni, for further study. (I linked to the most recent addition 3rd edition, though I have the 2007 edition) I recently reviewed baking soda and baking powder in it.
Below is my summary of why both baking soda and baking powder are in my pancake recipe:
A leavening agent is anything that makes a baked good more fluffy and light. Baking soda works as a leavening agent by producing carbon dioxide gas. It didn’t come into recorded history until the 1700’s, so before then all leaven was apparently from yeast.
Baking soda is activated by moisture and heat. Unfortunately, if used by itself, it takes so much baking soda to get desired leavening that the food ends up discolored and has an off flavor. When an acid is added to the mix, less baking soda is needed for a good amount of carbon dioxide production.
One way to add acid is to use acidic foods, like buttermilk, sour milk, vinegar, fruit, and even brown sugar. The bubbles that are produced will also expand some more in response to the heat of cooking, as you probably remember from chemistry class that gases tend to expand when heated. The acid from such foods is variable, even in a given food. For instance, buttermilk gets more acid with age.
Baking powder is baking soda plus a dry acid (acid salts) and probably some filler starch. The idea is to have a more consistent reaction. However, because it is pre-mixed, baking powder does not have the same shelf life as baking soda. If containers are left open or there is a lot of moisture in the air, the reactants will have already partially combined, so it will be less effective for baking.
Both baking soda and basic baking powder react to moisture almost all at once. This means that as bubbles pop, there is no replacing them. You just get kind of flat baked goods. Companies that make baking powder have tried different ways of making the reaction last longer. One way was to use the slower acting acid called sodium aluminum sulfate. This came into disrepute when someone said aluminum might cause Alzheimers (which is possibly more related to lack of fat in the diet, but that’s another discussion).
Another work-around is treating the acid so that some of it isn’t activated until there is heat applied. I read my Rumford baking powder can that one ingredient is monocalcium phosphate, which is listed in How Baking Works as one of the acids that is often coated so that is reacts more slowly. This is why making your own baking powder with cream of tartar (a fast acting acid) will probably not give you the same results as commercial baking powder
Whether using baking soda or baking powder, the results of the leavening (the gas bubbles) will be less stable in thinner dough or batter. Pancakes are thinner batter. That is why we don’t want to over-mix the batter.
Pancake recipes often include both baking soda and baking powder. It doesn’t take nearly as much baking soda with a food acid to get a reaction, so choosing ratios of dry ingredients to wet ingredients is more straightforward. However, adding some baking powder will give the batter a bit of a boost when it is cooking. Even the pancake recipe on the Rumford can lists both baking soda and baking powder!
I have not read all the way through How Baking Works, but I have made good use of the index to look up things depending on my current project. Having a better understanding of why recipes are the way they are both helps me get better results and helps me to experiment more successfully.
Let me know how your pancakes turn out!
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