Pancake Days

I've been dealing with sourdough for a few months now. Dealing... not in a bad way... rather like how one might say one has been "dealing" with Spike Jonze for a few months now. Which is to say this deal is super good and exciting and is producing consistently surprising and delightful results.

This is wild yeast sourdough I'm talking about. The world's easiest party trick. You don't need to buy yeast from a store, and you don't need to have children*. You can do it all with just a bowl o flour and water. Just add a cup of flour and a cup of water (I initially started mine with raw milk but later read that's not the best idea, as the enzymes will compete and the starter will be stymied by internal conflict) and leave it out a couple days and your very own local yeast will settle in and colonize that shit. Then you can do whatever with it. Keep it in the fridge and take it out to make bread, pancakes, pizza dough, whatever; or you can pamper it, cook with it every day, feed it obsessively, give it all kinds of special grains and treats... There are many books on the subject. One of the first I found that gave significant ink to wild yeast was The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. The cover of that book features what is surely an unfathomably proud and skilled young baker cradling a great big loaf of what turns out to be a rustic wild yeast sourdough bread, made from a really complicated starter. So there's that. Also excellent is Forgotten Skills Of Cooking by Darina Allen which contains an excellent and relatively simple recipe that inspired my early attempts at crafting sourdough loaves. The book I got my basic starter concept from was A World Of Breads by Dolores Casella which is older but hey, it was already in the kitchen! Dolores was the first to tell me "hey girl, just put flour and water together." No doubt the more complicated recipes produce enviable starters, but I'm starting simple so I can learn. And I think I'm getting better and better results the longer my starter endures.

Today I made pancakes. It was one of the most restful experiences of recent memory.

I started the batter last night (along with some bread dough for what is shaping up to be a pretty keen loaf of bread; more on that later on. It's still rising) using my grandpa's recipe. I always end up modifying and fudging recipes, and Grandpa and I also use different starters. His pancakes were usually made with white flour, and I use wheat. For this batch I used the gaspingly cheap Nebraska-grown wheat flour from Open Harvest Organic Grocery or whatever they currently call themselves, a nice if increasingly starbucksy co-op type grocery store here in Lincoln that has all the delicious stuff. I used to work for them and they are basically the only decent employer in town, but the capitalism train is on its way to its final derailment, and they're just getting on board. Digression!

So To Make The Pancakes
(it couldn't be simpler)
Mix a cup of starter, 2 cups warm water and 2 1/2 cups flour in a large bowl, mix it up and let it sit overnight.
The next day it's all bubbly and lively and exciting. You will want to take out one cup of that wonderful stuff and give it back to your starter, as a way of saying thank you. You can also feed starters on just fresh water and flour but this is better. I'm not 100% sure why, but it makes intuitive sense...?

Next, add to your pancake batter:
one egg,
2 T oil (or butter) (I didn't exactly measure, just melted some in a skillet which turned out to be a good way to prep the skillet for frying the pancakes)
1/4 cup buttermilk (or dry milk or regular milk; Grandpa's recipe calls for dry but I have never done it that way. Today I used buttermilk)

Beat thoroughly.

Next I combined a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of baking soda and dumped it in and stirred it up. Effervescence occurs. I added roughly 2 T of honey, also.

The batter can now rest while your skillet heats up, and once it's ready you just pour out your batter as desired, and cook those pancakes.

In our household they're known as No-Coast Westie Cakes, but since yours will be made with your own local wild yeast and your own local flour and water and your own random variations, name yours whatever you want. Be proud.

In my ignorance I can't be sure why today's cakes were the best I've ever done, but here are some theories:

• that little cast iron skillet
• medium-low heat and patience
• that butter (homemade, very nice, see below)
• that buttermilk (byproduct of butter making)
• the flour I used seems to be pretty good, as the bread I made from it is looking good, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself there.

 (butter)

*why raise one human child when you can have a quiet, stationary, unassuming jar full of BILLIONS OF SINGLE CELLED LIFE FORMS which you can care for without the pesky interference of local and state governments.