Pancakes

Two Recipes In One

I love making pancakes.

As someone who enjoys making self-deprecating jokes, you won't hear me say this type of thing too much: I am super good at making pancakes.

Below you will find two recipes:

1) My recipe to make an all-purpose flour pancake mix: sweet, light, fluffy, and just a treat

2) My recipe for using Sunrise Harvest heritage 7-grain pancake mix: Amazing flavor, trickier to get the texture just right, for sure healthier.

Honestly, we really enjoy having both kinds. The 7-grain mix is just so much heartier and richer flavor. The flax in there is healthy, but it makes getting the texture of the batter a bit trickier. The recipe below works better than the one on their package.

You can see even in the images that the 7-grain one shows here is darker in color and due to my modifications below, a bit lighter in texture.

The Pancake Mix

Pancakes should be fun, fast and easy - to do that, you need to make a pre-mix and have it onhand OR purchase a mix made up for you.

My all-purpose mix is easy to make, especially with a scale. I usually make up a double or even triple batch to have on hand.

Mix Ingredients: All-Purpose

Prepare a pre-made pancake mix so you save time:
In a large tubberware or other sealable container, add:

• 6 cups of all purpose flour (~800g)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (10g)
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder (13g)
• 1 Tablespoon salt (16g)

After they are in the container, seal and shake up to mix everything well.

7-Grain Mix

If you're logged in, you can add the 7-grain mix to your cart using the box tile below:

Making Pancakes

Ingredients

When you're ready to make the pancakes, pull out the mix as well as the following ingredients:

• 3 ounces of melted butter (6T)
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/3 cups of whole milk (best to use half milk and half buttermilk or yogurt)
• dash of vanilla (2tsp? I never measure)
• 2 Cups of the pancake mix
• 1 frozen stick of butter

If you are using the 7-grain mix, you'll need more liquid. Plan on 1/2 - 1 extra full cup of milk to get thin enough pancakes. As stated below, they work fine as thicker cakes, but... you'll be missing out on the magic.

Steps:

1. Melt the butter into a large bowl or 8 cup measuring cup like this one.Add eggs to butter and whisk well
2. Whisk in the milk and vanilla
3. Fairly quickly mix in the pancake mix. Whisk it up until mostly smooth, some lumps are ok.
4. Add more milk if needed (see tip)
   
   Pro tip: The batter shouldn't be runny, but it shouldn't be thick either. The best pancakes are fairly thin, but this takes more labor to cook a batch. Thicker pancakes aren't nearly as good. I often need a full 2 1/2 cups of milk or so to get the right consistency.

Cooking:

1. Heat up your griddle fairly hot. You want it almost to the smoke point of the butter, but not quite. We cook on a stainless or cast iron griddle around 425 degrees. A drop of water should dance on the griddle.
2. Use the frozen stick of butter to grease half of the griddle. Be liberal with the butter here, it is an important medium to cook your pancakes properly.
3. Pour the batter to make pancakes that fill up the buttered half of the griddle. They should be golden brown and crispy within a minute or two if the temp and thickness of batter is correct.
4. Butter the other half of the griddle and flip the pancakes onto that half.
5. Re-butter the first half and repeat.

When everything is just right with the heat and thickness of the batter, I find that I can butter the griddle and pour four pancakes in the time it takes to cook the other set of four. There might be 20-30 seconds of down time between each set. If your batter is thicker, you'll have to turn down the heat a bit or the insides won't be cooked before the outside starts to burn. Thicker pancakes takes a lot less effort and can cook at lower temps, but they aren't nearly as good.

Tools & Tricks

Making the best pancakes isn’t about the exact recipe you use. It is about the tools you have and the techniques you employ. Here are some things you need to know.

• Heavy griddle that can retain a lot of heat. We use this cast iron one in addition to a built in stainless griddle.
• Pancake dispenser. I've used basic ones like these on Amazon and they are fine. But getting a larger professional one like this was totally worth it (hand wash only). I usually make a double batch and freeze at least half for later, so having something that can hold that much is helpful.
• Butter. Lots of butter. Lots of frozen butter. This makes it much easier to cook with.
• Use a cooling rack. Putting cakes on a plate will ruin the texture you’re going for. I recommend having half sheet stainless racks like these. I hate having the coated ones where it flakes off onto my food. These can just get thrown into the dishwasher and its a snap to clean up.
• Balance. You need the batter thin enough to allow for quick cooking and then balance the heat so that the cakes cook up as fast as possible, but not so fast the inside is raw when the outside is golden brown.
• Rotate. Start the cakes on one part of your griddle and finish them on the other. Never flip them back to the same place. This allows the griddle to recover a bit of heat and time for you to re-butter the area before a cake is flipped onto it.
• Butter. Did I talk about butter yet? Never put raw batter down without a good layer of butter. This is why having frozen butter is helpful, otherwise you’ll be dripping butter all over while you re-butter the griddle with every new cake and every flip.
• Real Maple syrup. If you’re using a syrup, use a 100% maple syrup, we prefer grade B. This has a ton of important minerals in it and skips all of the unpleasant artificial flavors and corn syrup.