I read a newspaper article recently about Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. In the article, a woman was attempting to make pancakes from scratch for the first time in her life. She didn’t know how to make pancakes that didn’t come from a box mix. Unfortunately, her experience represents that of most Americans.
I want to help change that experience. Here is my family’s favorite recipe for homemade pancakes. My husband adapted it from a recipe he found in the Washington Post many years ago. It has become a wonderful family tradition for the kids to make pancakes with Daddy on weekend mornings. Easy to do, and so delicious! I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
Ingredients
1 C. all-purpose flour
2 Tbls. Sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
Pinch salt
1 egg
1/3 C. light sour cream
1 C. low-fat buttermilk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract (optional)
2 Tbls. unsalted butter, melted
Directions:
1. In a large bowl, sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and sour cream together. Then whisk in the buttermilk and vanilla (if using).
3. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently.
4. Add the melted butter and stir just until combined. Do not overmix! The batter will be lumpy.
5. Heat griddle over medium heat. Coat the pan lightly with vegetable shortening. (This produces the prettiest pancakes. Butter or cooking spray do not work as nicely.)
5. Drop pancakes onto griddle and cook on both sides til done.
6. You may also add other ingredients to the pancakes while they are cooking, such as blueberries, chocolate chips, or diced apples & cinnamon.
This recipe yields enough pancakes to serve approx. 2-3 people. We like to double the recipe to feed our family of 4.
There is one thing that could be improved in this recipe, and that is to use white whole wheat flour (not unbleached white or w.w. pastry flour), so that you get the fiber that naturally occurs in the wheat, but is taken out by the process of making it white (not to mention that white flour is bleached). This is a type of whole wheat flour that is milled from a particular variety of wheat that is lighter in texture & color than the traditional whole wheat flour. The two brands I have found are King Arthur and Wheat Montana. I use it cup for cup in my recipes. If you are afraid it will make the pancakes a little heavier, you can increase the baking powder slightly.
While Jamie’s main focus was on getting people to eat real, homemade food rather than processed, that is only the beginning. We must also address the issue of our dependence on food that is void of fiber, as this is one of the reasons for the epidemic in diabetes and obesity. Humans have never evolved to be able to handle a lot of carbs, unless they are the high quality complex carbs from fruits and veggies. And there is really no place for simple carbs like white flour and sugar in our diet. The pancreas cannot handle the carb overload that the typical American diet throws at it.
Health to you!
Hi Kim- As a former instructor of Nutrition classes, I couldn’t agree with you more! Fiber is an important part of a healthy diet, and the Food Guide Pyramid recommends that at least half of all grains we consume should be WHOLE grains to incorporate more fiber into our diets. Thank you for this very helpful suggestion to make this recipe more nutritious!