Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to bake bread. My friends and family are now used to the jars of fermenting yeast on my kitchen shelves. But sometimes, those jars of wild yeast seem to multiply and the discarded sourdough often gets…well…discarded.
I really hate that. Reuse, re-purpose, recycle is my mantra and I try to stick to that principle whenever I can. One of the ways I re-purpose my discarded wild yeast is to make sourdough pancakes. I feed my wild yeast starter in the morning, so using it for that day’s breakfast makes perfect sense to me.
If you make sourdough bread at home and have a starter or two on the shelf, try this recipe and see how you like the flavor of your pancakes. They are yeasty-good and a bit heavier than typical pancakes. That’s because sourdough starters are often fed with heavier flours like rye and whole wheat. You can always lighten it up a bit by adding less starter and a bit more all-purpose flour.
Sourdough Pancakes
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- maple syrup
- 1½ cups whole milk reduced fat is ok too
- ¼ cup Greek yogurt or sour cream optional
- 1 cup sourdough starter stirred down
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour also use whole wheat, einkhorn or any mix of flours you like
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp Kosher salt
- ⅛ cup granulated sugar or raw, brown sugar-very lightly packed
- ¼ cup (½ stick) butter melted
Instructions
- Heat the maple syrup. Because pouring cold syrup over a stack of steaming hot pancakes makes no sense at all!
- Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
- Beat eggs in a medium bowl. Add milk, yogurt or sour cream, sourdough starter, and vanilla to the eggs. Mix just to combine. Do not over mix.
- Add dry ingredients to the egg mixture, stirring to combine. Lumps are ok. They help to create the pockets of air that make pancakes fluffy.
- Stir in melted butter. Set bowl aside and wait about 30 minutes to let the batter rise a bit.
- Make some coffee, gather up some toppings or take a shower. 🙂
- Lightly spray a skillet and heat on medium high until sizzling. Turn heat down to medium and drop the batter in spoonfuls onto the skillet. Cook until light brown and bubbles start to appear on top, then flip to cook the other side, about 1 minute. Flip only once.
- You might need to adjust the amount of milk depending on the stiffness of your sourdough starter and your preferred batter consistency. The above ingredients work well for my sourdough starter; if you’re using a stiff starter, you might want to add around 1/2 cup more milk.