When I pulled Sally Fallon’s cookbook off the shelf to refresh my memory on the proper crispy nut process, I spent a few minutes flipping through the pages. Years ago, I read my way through all the recipes, making quite a few of them as I went along and scrawling notes in the margins. So when I landed on a page with an above-average number of notes, the word “Great!”, and a pancake recipe, I took a second look. One can never have too many pancake recipes.
It’s a bracingly healthy recipe, borderline annoying with all its wholesome goodness. It’s all whole grain (of course) but Sally goes one step father and soaks the flour in a buttermilk/yogurt mixture to “activate the enzyme phytase … which … break[s] down phytic acid in the bran of grains.”
Not that I really understand all that, of course. But I’m gonna go ahead and assume it’s code for: these pancakes are really good for you so eat them.
Actually, I do understand that, just not in a brainy, scientific-term way. My understanding is more of a gut thing (pun not intended, but ha anyway). My daughter and I have been reading up on the whys and how-tos (to’s?) of fermented chicken feed. The ‘fessionals say it’s good because the chickens get more nutrients out of the grain, and the bad bacteria is reduced while the good bacteria is strengthened (this is lacto-fermentation we’re talking about). As a result, the chickens are healthier, the eggs are firmer shelled and heartier, and the chickens consume less grain. Translate all that to humans (minus the eggs part), and you’ve got some good reasons to make these pancakes.
My freezer is cluttered with half-empty bags of different flours: teff, spelt, rye, buckwheat, oat, etc. I figured that by making these pancakes once a week, using one cup whole wheat and one cup Random Flour, I could pancake my way through my freezer.
And that’s just what I’ve been doing. A single recipe is sufficient for the children’s breakfast.
These aren’t “candy” pancakes, mind. In other words, the children don’t go all gah-gah, but they do eat them happily enough. My older son, naturally, would always appreciate a few more, but a few of these hearty doozies is plenty, I tell him. If he’s still hungry, he can eat a bowl of granola. Besides, lunch time is only a few hours after breakfast. Survival happens.
Sally Fallon’s Pancakes
Adapted from Nourishing Traditions.
I use one cup of whole wheat and one cup of whatever grain I’m trying to use up at the time. Lately, it’s been dark rye. For the buttermilk, I use one cup plain yogurt and one cup water.
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups buttermilk
1-2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter
Before you go to bed, measure the flour into a bowl and stir in the buttermilk (or yogurt-water mixture). Cover the bowl with plastic and let it sit on the counter overnight.
In the morning, mix together the couple tablespoons of flour with the salt and soda. I do this to help the soda and salt get more evenly distributed in the batter. Sprinkle the mixture over the sludge of soaked flour and whisk well. Add the eggs and melted butter and whisk again.
Fry ladlefuls of the batter on a happily-buttered hot skillet. Serve pancakes with butter and syrup.
This same time, years previous: out and about, the quotidian (4.23.12), cauliflower potato soup, me and you, and the radishes,
