The Pancake Saga Part VI

This is now a split decision.  Over the Labor Day weekend we decided to pack up the RV and go camping in Valdez.  The goal was to explore the area, get some good fall color viewing, and catch Silver Salmon (Coho).  And of course, since I had four days off, I got to make three more attempts at the perfect sourdough pancake.

Unfortunately, none of my attempts seem to be improving lately.  I've had six since my last post and  yesterday we pulled the starter bowl out of the RV refrigerator where it had sat for two weeks and it has a strong distinctive sourdough smell.  What does that mean?  It means there's good yeast in there but I'm just not getting them to grow enough the way I'm managing the starter.

The concept is simple.  If you use the starter, most likely you'll split it into two parts: One for the pancakes to grow overnight in the oven with a light on, and one to continue in the jar.  When you do that you roughly half the number of yeast in the starter.  Now, depending on how long the starter jar has had to grow, the yeast may still have plenty of food left so it's flour not yeast.  If you use your starter too often and don't give it enough warm growing time (70-75 degrees F) then you will propagate a starter which never comes even close to running out of food and therefore isn't very strong.

I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now and I'm starting to think my solution is going to be a double feeding to really energize my yeast and get it active, then I may try to re-energize my base starter or to run two starters, one as insurance and one which I keep out at room temperature and give lots of energy.

I did discover with my pancakes over this last weekend that I could improve the taste of pancakes which are not fully sourdough by using the basic principles of buttermilk pancakes.  These went over well with the kids and I may do it more often.  In a nutshell, I used a slightly less watery starter and added soured milk (butter milk) and oatmeal to get the dough to the right consistency.  All else remained the same and they were a much more flavorful pancake.

I think if I mix all of these components I may just come up with the perfect pancake: A sourdough buttermilk pancake.