Sourdough Pancakes

Note: I’ve copied this recipe from my personal website, so that you can access it in the same format as the other content on Efficient Plant-Based Cooking. I published the original a long time ago and nowadays I would do some things differently, so at some point I might update this.

Preliminary considerations

  • This is a variation in character on the sourdough bread in a rice cooker.

  • Usually I don't publish pancake recipes, because pancakes are not efficient. Cooking them requires a lot of attention. (Of course I don't disapprove of pancakes in general. Only that this is a site about efficient cooking and not holiday cooking.) These pancakes are also not time-efficient, but they are resource-efficient: you can make them to use up discarded sourdough or as a fallback if you've wanted to make sourdough bread, but added too much water.

  • The ingredients are very flexible. Since you don't have to pay attention to gluten content and development (which would influence kneadability and shapeability of a dough), you can substitute any kinds of flours you want and only need to adjust the amount of water.

  • The outcome is quite sour, usually. If you feel that's too much for a pancake, you might experiment with fermentation times and temperatures and the water content of the starter. If you have obtained a pleasing sourness, but not enough leavening power, you could add extra yeast (blasphemy!) or start experimenting with the living conditions of your sourdough microbes. There's lots of things you can read and do!

Sourdough Pancakes

  • 150 ml sourdough starter ((approx.))
  • 500 ml water
  • 400 g whole-wheat flour (for the sponge)
  • 4 tbsp whole-wheat flour ((approx.) for the final batter)
  • 2 tsp salt

  1. Stir sourdough, flour for the sponge and water together.

  2. Let ferment for 8 to 24 hours. It should bubble well after this.

  3. Stir in the salt and add flour (or water) until it has the consistency of a thick pancake batter.

  4. Let it ferment further for around eight hours.

  5. Cook covered in an at most lightly greased frying pan on medium-high heat.

  6. Stack cooked pancakes and wrap them in a tea towel to keep them soft.

Notes

  • Add spices if you want. Cloves and oregano worked quite well, for instance.

  • Covering the pan is not strictly necessary, but might improve energy efficiency and moistness.

  • The pancakes keep forever when wrapped in a tea towel, but become quite unchewable after the second day.

  • Only after uploading this recipe I realized that there are lots of recipes for sourdough pancakes on the web. I couldn't quickly find a plain plant-based one, which is why I'm publishing my own.