Blueberry Sourdough Pancakes

Today is Saturday.

I think mainly just to annoy me with his perfectness, my husband makes pancakes from scratch most Saturday mornings. He just couldn’t let cooking be my thing, could he? I can’t stay mad though because his cakes are so fluffy and delicious. But this particular Saturday he slept in longer than I needed to and, I am in my new "I have a food blog so I need to make some food” mode so I made the pancakes.

Since I can’t compete with his, I had to resort to making sourdough pancakes. I get that not everyone has a starter. During the quarantine I held out for a long time making regular old banana bread, but at some point, I jumped on the sourdough bandwagon. I murdered the first starter gifted from a neighbor, but when my best friend gave me one, I was determined to make it work. So now we eat even more carbs- yaay. I haven’t found a lot of recipes with which to use my leftover starter – they all seem to require more leftover than my little guy can muster up each week. These blueberry sourdough pancakes only need a half cup of starter, and only 30 minutes of rise time. 

Liz's Blueberry Sourdough Pancakes 

Makes one dozen 4in. pancakes

Ingredients

½ cup (113g) sourdough starter, ripe (fed) or discard

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

1 T. vegetable oil

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. cinnamon

1 large egg

1 T. brown sugar

1 cup fresh blueberries

Instructions

1) Mix the starter, flour, and milk in a medium bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and a clean dishtowel and let rest for 30 minutes in a warm place. Rinse your berries and roll them in the brown sugar.  

Next I drank coffee and fed the awake (so obviously, complaining) children cottage cheese mixed with applesauce. It may be of interest that the brown sugar I used was the last of a container. It was hard to the point of barely being usable so my engineer husband dug it out and put it in the food processor. He re-pulverized it and we decided to use it just for pancakes, oatmeal, etc.—basically just for our family. You can avoid having your brown sugar harden like this by keeping a piece of bread in the container. I still vividly remember learning about why this is scientifically possible in junior high science class, but I don’t actually remember the science behind it. My mom also keeps her brown sugar in the fridge for good measure. I keep mine in the pantry and don’t know why the bread was missing from this particular canister. Really hungry child? A ghost? Kitchen mystery.

2) Add the oil, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and egg, and stir gently until combined. Fold in the sugared blueberries.

3) Heat your griddle to 325°F, grease, and use a ¼ cup scoop to drop the batter onto the griddle. I like using Pam's Butter Flavor Canola Oil to grease. There is a picture of a pancake on the bottle so I suppose I'm not an original.

4) Wait for the pancakes to bubble and flip. Their edges will appear slightly dry when ready. Continue cooking until the bottom is golden.

5) Repeat with the remaining batter. You can keep cakes warm in a 200°F oven while you prepare the rest of the batter.

They devoured them. I had already eaten cereal an hour ago. Should have doubled!