Serves 2 - 3 people
5 minutes to prepare batter, with 15 minute "resting" period
Based on a recipe from "Jeff Smith Cooks American"
Being quite a partisan for my Mom's pancakes, I never expected to ever like "fluffy pancakes." And yet one day I tried a recipe from Jeff Smith's cookbook "Jeff Smith Cooks American", and found it was possible to like both kinds of pancakes.
One might think that the recipe for sourdough pancakes came from San Francisco; and, in fact, I lived in the Bay Area when I first tried these. But Jeff Smith remembers these from his own childhood, spent somewhere further north on the West Coast.
Our copy of his cookbook is currently in storage while we live in Switzerland, so I've had to reconstruct the recipe from memory. It's pretty close; again, as with my Mom's pancakes, the recipe is pretty fault-tolerant. The recipe here is for 2 or 3 people; it scales reasonably well.
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1 egg 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup sourdough starter 1/2 cup flour 1 Tablespoon sugar |
1 teaspoon baking powder 1/8 teaspoon baking soda 1 Tablespoon melted butter butter (for the griddle) |
Thoroughly beat the egg, then mix in the milk and sourdough starter.
Reserve a little flour, then combine all the dry ingredients and mix together. Pour in the liquid ingredients and mix only enough to make a smooth batter. The batter should be the consistency of a relatively thin cake batter; add the reserved flour, if needed. Allow the batter to rest for 15 minutes (during which time it will thin some).
While the batter is resting, heat a large skillet or griddle. You'll need to experiment here, as ranges vary so much in their heating characteristics, but a 6 or 7 (out of 10) on an electric range generally works well. The cooking surface is ready when it is hot enough to cause a drop of water to dance about rapidly (usually takes about 15 minutes on my rangetop).
Once the batter is done resting and the cooking surface is ready, gently stir in the tablespoon of melted butter into the batter. Coat the cooking surface with a thin coat of butter. Pour 1/4 cup of the batter onto the cooking surface for each pancake; there is no need to spread it. Cook the pancake until the entire surface has lost its glossy sheen; flip the pancake, and cook it for a little longer.
Pancakes should be eaten as soon after cooking as possible. Serve with maple syrup.