The Pancake Part III

My 4th try was on the 11th of August in the year of our Lord 2012.  My wife bought the ingredients so I could make the pancakes exactly as the recipe on the back of the info card says.  It recommends mixing the starter with Krutzeaz pancake mix and letting it grow overnight.  Then add all the rest of the ingredients in the morning.  According to one of my wife's friends, Steve Floyd (a radio host on 660 KFAR and host of The Better Breakfast Show which I listen to every morning) when you add the baking soda or "soda," the mix is supposed to almost double in size before your eyes.  Obviously, I did something wrong as mine stayed flat.

That morning I tried using our great new George Foreman G5 griddle.  So I mixed it all up and poured some on the griddle.  The first two pancakes came out great, but for some reason not very sourdoughy.  The second round just wouldn't cook and get brown.  It was taking about 5 min for each set of pancakes.  This happens when the griddle cools from the new batter and there isn't enough latent heat in the plates to keep it cooking.  I still made all of the pancakes on the griddle but they were mostly white and, yet again, not very sourdoughy.

In fact, that morning the cool griddle was the least of my problems.  They also kept falling apart and just didn't taste right. I believe I used some expletives about that method and the frustration I had with the poorly written recipe from the Kiwanis who gave us the starter.  At this time I vowed not to use that recipe again and have focused on Steve's recipe instead, which he graciously shared with us.

Now, since I'm frustrated just writing about that morning, I will post a serene Alaska video for all to enjoy.

Alaskan Medevac coming in for a landing in the Tanana Flats south of North Pole, AK.

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.