Pretty much, I’ve had a love affair with sourdough my whole life. But for the last 20 years or so I didn’t have a sourdough starter going. I first bought one back in the 1960s, and I baked bread regularly and often made pancakes and waffles, and had a great recipe for a dinner roll too. But then I got out of the habit and finally I’d let the starter go too long between feedings and the batter had expired, so to speak. I kept it in one of those cute little crockery spring lock containers and it just sat in the back of the refrigerator. But with it and other living organisms, eventually it ran out of fuel or food and if you don’t keep it going by feeding it flour and water every so often and allowing it to bloom, brighten, develop its yeasty presences, it will die of old age. This was years ago, of course, but when I’d opened the crock and sniffed the contents I knew it was a goner.
Then a couple of weeks ago you’ll remember I wrote up a post about my DH’s father Charles’ buttermilk pancakes. That got me to thinking, longingly, about my favorite sourdough and its wonderful tasty benefits. I enjoyed Dave’s dad’s buttermilk pancakes, but not nearly as much as I love the flavor and even the spongy texture of sourdough. So, when I saw a package of sourdough starter I jumped at it and bought one. As I’m writing this, the starter is still in its infancy of development. At its first mixing, once it sits for 4 hours, you mix more bread flour and water into it for 7 straight days and you need to keep it at about 90°F day and night, feeding it once a day. Then, and only then, will the sour part of it have progressed so it’s taste-able. Each evening I scoop out a cup of the bubbly fermenting batter and throw it out, and add in another mixture of flour and warm water. I stir it all around until they are no lumps and cover again with plastic wrap and let it get a nice warm glow for another 24 hours. Finding a place in my kitchen with a consistent 90° temperature was a little difficult – the warming drawer doesn’t go that low. The oven obviously doesn’t. I finally settled on putting it on top of my toaster oven, just 3-4 inches below the fluorescent under-cupboard lights in my little butler’s pantry. We’ve just had to leave those lights on day and night for the last several days. That drives my DH crazy – he’s a stickler about turning off lights – and I do forget now and then to turn off a light somewhere in the house. We both do.
Once I’ve finished the 7-day feeding schedule I’ll be able to store a few cups of starter in the refrigerator and hopefully it will keep for a week without getting into trouble. I suppose I could set up an alarm on my iPhone to remind me once a week to feed the starter, couldn’t I? Like maybe every Saturday morning, perhaps.
You can buy a sourdough starter package mix as I did. You can also make your own – there’s a good tutorial over at King Arthur Flour, if you’re interested: sourdough starter. At the cookware store I purchased the package you see at right. Buying the package makes it quite simple. As I recall, it was about $5.00. The sourdough starter I bought years ago was from Alaska and I certainly had many conjured thoughts over the years about the old “sourdoughs,” they called them, the solitary gold miners with their trusty pack horses, and the stories about how they would mix up the batter the night before and store it inside their sleeping bags next to their bodies, or on the horse, next to the horse’s hide, where it would keep warm. Because warmth is key here. This new starter I bought claims to be a San Francisco style. Now I don’t exactly know what that means – but San Franciscans do believe their sourdoughs are better than anybody else’s. The bread certainly is – there’s just nothing quite like the real thing – that musty, fusty sour smell from freshly baked sourdough bread that is ubiquitous on restaurant tables in SFO. We can buy sourdough bread here in Southern California, as you can in most places here in the U.S., but it ISN’T like the loaves from there.
Because I was anxious to try some sourdough pancakes, instead of throwing out the 1-cup of batter the other day (day 3 of its 7-day growing period), I used that one cup to make a small batch of sourdough pancakes. Perhaps they weren’t quite as powerfully sour as they’ll be after I continue getting the dough more sour as the days go by, but they were awfully darned good.
This batter I’m brewing is all made with bread flour – because the starter package is aimed at baking bread, not making anything else. So, I mixed in a little bit of all-purpose flour (because the batter was just slightly too thin, if you can believe that) and the other ingredients before pouring little dollops into a hot nonstick pan. I didn’t even grease the pan. It didn’t need it because I’d added just a little jot of canola oil to the batter. You don’t even need to butter the pancakes, either. Thin little sourdough pancakes somehow don’t need butter – but syrup yes. But they’re even good plain because they’re very moist.
What’s GOOD: Well, I loved it – loved that spongy chew to every bite. As pancakes go,I love thin ones, so these ticked all my sourdough hot buttons. And it was even sour, which I liked and I’ll like it even better once the dough is finished it’s 7 days of fermenting.
What’s NOT: if you don’t want to hassle with a sourdough starter, the feeding, mixing and nurturing you have to do with it, you may not like it. But the flavor of those finished goods. Oh, yes! Worth it, I hope.
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Sourdough Pancakes
Recipe By: An old favorite of mine, from the 1960’s
Serving Size: 4 (as part of a breakfast – double quantity if this is all you’re eating)
1 1/2 cups sourdough batter
1 large egg
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil — or melted butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons evaporated milk — or regular milk – approximate (depends on the consistency of the sourdough batter)
1. To the sourdough batter add the egg, sugar, oil, salt and milk (if needed).
2. Stir vigorously until all ingredients are smooth. If the mixture is too thick, add a bit more milk. If it’s too thin, add a tablespoon or two of all-purpose flour.
3. Heat a nonstick pan or griddle to medium-high. Pour small slightly larger than dollar-sized pancakes into pan and wait until a few bubbles appear in the center and flip to other side. Cook another 30-40 seconds or just until the pancake has browned slightly. Serve immediately while they’re hot. It’s not necessary to serve butter, but do have maple syrup to pour over the top.
Note: This is not a full-breakfast portion, but 4 servings as part of a breakfast. To serve main course portions, double the quantities. You can make larger pancakes – the small size is just my preference. The consistency of sourdough batter varies – some are thinner than others, so you may need to vary the amount of flour or milk you add. It’s better to have to thin the batter than to have to thicken it as the flour won’t have had time to feed in the yeasty sourdough environment. Sourdough thins as it sits (during the overnight process) so you may not need any additional milk. The pancakes take less time than usual to cook because they are SO thin. Watch carefully and definitely do not do something else – stay by the griddle and watch them!
Per Serving: 72 Calories; 5g Fat (65.7% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 4g Carbohydrate; 0g Dietary Fiber; 55mg Cholesterol; 426mg Sodium.
Melynda
said on February 3rd, 2014:
Must give these a try, I have a new starter going.
I don’t know that my sourdough pancake recipe is all that different – it’s the sourdough aspect of it that I like so much. . . carolyn t