Your favorite pancake recipe

So I have been looking for a great pancake recipe. After surfing the web, I found that none of them seem to agree on much. Most call for 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and 1 cup of milk. The rest however, is completely different...some say 1 tablespoon butter or oil, while others call for up to 1/2 cup! Some say 1-2 Tablespoons of sugar, some have none. Salt has been anywhere from 1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon. Baking powder is also not consistant and some recipes call for small amounts of baking soda. Any suggestions? Does anyone have a really good homemade pancake recipe they would like to share with me?

Maria-
You looking for regular pancakes/flapjacks or German style which are very thin, almost crepe-like?
Bill

Bill,

I am looking for regular/flapjack style pancakes. The kind you get at a dinner or pancake house on Sunday morning .

Not totally home made, but darn good. I use Bisquick Heart Healthy pancake mix, but I add one extra egg, cinnamon, nutmeg and pure vanilla.

Maria, we make ours with sourdough starter, using a recipe I wrote up here.

It's really versatile, and the starter gives it a delicious complexity. It also keeps really well, so I often make a batch with discarded sourdough starter, stash it in the fridge and it does breakfast for the boys for the following two mornings. Drizzled with organic maple syrup of course!

I got the recipe I use years ago from friends who made it for us. It's from a cookbook entitled something like "The Breakfast Book". A quick check of Google indicates that the book is by Marion Cunningham, and that the buttermilk pancake recipe is posted to the web in multiple places. The pancakes are very rich (I usually cut the amount of butter in the recipe), but they cook up light, too, especially if you get the amount of liquid right. They've been a hit with everyone we've cooked them for. I could post the recipe if you want, though I don't know the copyright implications.

Len says my homemade pancakes are unrivaled. The whole family loves them. (I usually can't keep from eating them hot off the griddle, plain. So good.) The recipe is from a 1975 Better Homes and Gardens "Quick Breads" Cookbook.

Buttermilk Pancakes

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 TBS sugar
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 beaten egg
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk*
2 TBS cooking oil

In mixing bowl, thoroughly stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, combine egg, milk, and oil. Add to dry ingredients. Beat until blended. Bake on hot, lightly greased griddle until golden. Makes 8 4-inch pancakes. (I definitely recommend doubling the recipe.)

*Sour milk can be made from fresh millk by putting 1 TBSP of vinegar into a measuring cup. Add milk to make 1 cup of liquid. Stir well and let mixture stand about 5 minutes before using in recipe.

Maria, we make ours with sourdough starter, using a recipe I wrote up here.

It's really versatile, and the starter gives it a delicious complexity. It also keeps really well, so I often make a batch with discarded sourdough starter, stash it in the fridge and it does breakfast for the boys for the following two mornings. Drizzled with organic maple syrup of course!

Ce,
You took the words right outa my mouth. My favorite pancakes of all time were the sourdough pancakes that my mother would make on weekends. (She had a sourdough culture in the fridge throughout my childhood). The consistency of those pancakes was less cakey than many seem to prefer, with a greater chewiness, much like a crepe. The waffles made from that sourdough starter were even more sublime and have never been equaled in my experience. BTW, we had pancakes (not sourdough) this morning with organic maple syrup that Andrew and I made from the two sugar maples standing outside our house. Our syrup won't be mistaken for the stuff we get from Michigan and Vermont, but it ain't half bad, either!

Mark Lipton

This has been in our family for generations:

1 C. Flour
1 Tbl Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
2 Eggs
1 C. Milk
3 Tbl butter
1/2 Tbl Honey

Sift dry ingreients into mixing bowl. Melt butter with honey. Mix into bowl eggs, milk, and honey/butter until just mixed together. Grill on a 400 degree F griddle, turning after many bubbles appear; and serve with butter and maple syrup.

1 cup flour
A pinch of salt
1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
A splash of neutral-flavoured oil or melted butter ... a couple of tablespoonsful

Work the egg and oil into the dry ingredients. Add enough milk to make a thin batter, a little at a time, mixing and beating in between additions. Leave it to stand at least half an hour before cooking.

Thanks everyone!!

Just to add a few thoughts that might be helpful..it may be heresy to say so here, but you could do a lot worse than to buy a good mix - something with honest ingredients - at your local health food store and work with that. Frankly they are pretty hard to beat. I make my own yogurt and use it as the bulk of my liquid, adding milk as needed to get the thickness I want. Something about fermented dairy really improves the tenderness and flavor of the resulting cakes. Buttermilk is the most commonly used and works nicely. If you use corn meal in your recipe, and I love corn meal pancakes, I recommend scalding it with boiling water first to cook it and tenderize it, because after all it doesn't really get much cooking in the frying pan. I almost always separate my eggs and beat the whites and fold them into the batter when making pancakes, something you see commonly in waffle recipes, but never in pancake recipes. It makes for a lighter fluffier cake. And finally, I ALWAYS make mine with blueberries. What could be better?? But I add the blueberries after I pour the batter into the pan, decorating the top of the cake as it were. You can just mix them into the batter in the bowl, but this tends to turn the batter blue, and it's hard to get the distribution right. Generally, and I got this from my wife, I top off the stack with a fried egg, pouring the real maple syrup over the whole thing. Delicious!

So I have been looking for a great pancake recipe. After surfing the web, I found that none of them seem to agree on much. Most call for 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and 1 cup of milk. The rest however, is completely different...some say 1 tablespoon butter or oil, while others call for up to 1/2 cup! Some say 1-2 Tablespoons of sugar, some have none. Salt has been anywhere from 1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon. Baking powder is also not consistant and some recipes call for small amounts of baking soda. Any suggestions? Does anyone have a really good homemade pancake recipe they would like to share with me?

Maria, my one requirement is that pancake batter REQUIRES A modicum of salt. not enough that you notice it, but enough so that if you don't add it, you miss it, and the pancake just tastes flat ands uninteresting. (how much salt is that?)