Pancake Recipe

Home cooking is where its at both for maintaining that robust hole-digger's physique as well as controlling the burn rate on your line of credit. It helps when you can get good ingredients on the cheap and I have good news on the flour front. Locally milled Stone Buhr whole wheat flour used to taste like crap, but ever since they availed themselves of Shepard's Grain, its been fresh and yummy without any of that stored-in-a-dusty-barn-too-long taste.
Then we found we could get it at the local URM in big sacks for $0.40/lb. For storage we got some special spin on tops for 5 gal buckets from Gamma Seal: good to go for buying flour 50 and 100 lbs at a time. That makes for a lot of homemade bread, cakes, pies, waffles, and of course pancakes.

I like my pancakes because they have the right balance to keep me going for awhile, work well under a pile of fruit, and are easy to go to when I transition from what I thought would be a day of computer jockey to field hand. I work out of my home, and can find myself suddenly heading out the door after a phone call. These days of moderated business, it is more likely for a bike ride with a compadre, but you get the picture. The ingredients are all close at hand, it only takes 15 minutes to get one whipped out, looks good under a handful of fruit, and I can do it while filling my water bottle and such.

Whole wheat Pancakes

Serves 1 Soil Scientist

1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder*
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup milk
1 egg white
3/4 tablespoon oil
dash vanilla

1) Measure flour, baking powder, suger, salt into main bowl. Mix.
2) Warm oil in the skillet
3) Place milk, vanilla and egg white in a shallow bowl,
warm gently by floating bowl on warm water
4) Warm oil in the skillet,
pour excess into warmed milk, vanilla and egg mixture.
whisk to an early froth.
5) Mix liquid into dry ingredients,
whisk to slowly pourable consistency.
6) I cook with the skillet at 350 deg F

350 deg F is is about the the smoke point for the unrefined coconut oil we sometimes use for reasons of personal taste. It tastes heavenly, but at $0.20/tbs it obviously is not realistic on a cut -to-the-bone budget. But it is only 20 cents versus 5, and my recipe adapts well to increasing the proportion of oil if I use coconut oil. This is handy when I am relying on a pancake to keep me going for awhile. And for that I really prefer the clean light feel I get from the coconut oil version. So its not just the heavenly taste.

Makes one 6-7 inch pancake
Serve with pile of alpine strawberries from the garden with a dribble of maple syrup.

To double recipe (or more) figure on using for each 2 pancakes:
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
2 egg whites plus 1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tablespoon melted coconut oil

Still seeking the right proportion of baking soda. Some folks don't mind the taste but I prefer it dialed down, however I do take pleasure in how amazingly light the texture is for a whole wheat recipe when I bump the baking soda 50% to 3/4 tsp ea. Rosemary doesn't mind it at that level and for me it works especially well if have fruit topping to balance the baking soda taste. I also find I can go in the other direction, can use 25% less (drop to 1/3 tsp per pancake) if I pre warm/whip the egg whites. To do this for the 2+ pancake recipe, also replace the yolk with a dash more milk.