Eternal? Saga of the Perpetual Sourdough or The Pancake

Sourdough starter is like a pet.  You have to love it, nurture it, and take care of it.  If you don't it gets mad at you and spews nasty colors and stinks and might even die.  Thus, given the requirement of feeding it at least weekly when not in constant use, the question must be asked as your jar overfloweth:  What do I do with the extra starter since I have extra every week?

The simple answer is: use it!  But you may not want to spend the time to make a big batch of bread so, instead, the next best thing which takes a lot less work is:





Sourdough Pancakes! 




Stop!  Wait!  If you're like my wife and me, we had never even heard of sourdough pancakes until moving to Alaska.  I'm not sure why that is as they were likely the most common way to use sourdough starter in pioneer days, but the truth is that sourdough was made internationally famous in San Francisco, CA, in the form of bread not pancakes.  So the world hasn't been introduced in entirety to the amazing sourdough pancake.

Now, the first thing you must know is that if you plan to imitate something it is best to know what it is supposed to taste like.  Thus, my family had a job.  We had to eat lots and lots of pancakes at different breakfast and mom and pop type of places so that we would know what the best sourdough pancakes taste like.  The answer, so far, is Sam's Sourdough Cafe in Fairbanks.  It was rough and my belly ached a few times but we survived this very difficult task.

Now that we knew what they were supposed to taste like, it became imperative to learn how to imitate perfection.

The task seems easy, but that would be a lie.  I'm on week 4 of trying and have yet to get close.  I could do it faster by making pancakes every day but I have this terrible problem called work which interferes with the expeditious nature of my "Becoming Sourdough."

Thus begins the sourdough pancake saga which will not end until I can repeat the process multiple weeks in a row.