Cornmeal Pancakes

These pancakes make for a tasty and satisfying breakfast. They are less sweet than most pancakes, so you can top them with something savory (like chutney, gravy, or even sour cream) or something sweet (like syrup or jam). For a special treat, open that leftover can of whole-berry cranberry sauce from the holidays and spoon it over the pancakes. The recipe makes about twelve four-inch pancakes, so you can feed three people if they are all you are eat, or six if you have something else with them.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup All-purpose unbleached flour
  • 1/2 cup Corn meal
  • 1 tbsp Sweetener (honey or organic raw sugar recommended)
  • 2 tsp Baking powder
  • 2 tbsp Ground flax seed
  • 1/2 cup Cold water
  • 1 1/4 cup Soy milk

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees and your griddle to medium or medium-high while you make the pancake batter. Put a cookie sheet in the oven for the pancakes to sit on as you make them.
  2. Stir the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl until well blended.
  3. Put the ground flax seed and water into a jar and shake until thoroughly mixed and a little frothy. This mixture replaces eggs, so you can substitute with another egg replacer of your choice (make 2 eggs worth).
  4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry all at once, and fold the mixture just until ingredients are consistent.
  5. Ladle batter onto the hot griddle. If necessary, spray the griddle first with canola oil or other non-stick spray.
  6. Cook the first side until bubbles form on the top and the edges start to look dry. This usually takes about two to three minutes, depending upon how hot you make the griddle. You can also lift an edge of a pancake with your spatula to see how brown they are getting.
  7. Flip the pancake and brown the other side for a minute or so.
  8. Use a spatula to slip the pancakes off the griddle and onto the cookie sheet in the oven.
  9. Serve hot from the oven with the topping of your choice.

Tips

  • The instructions assume you don’t have a griddle large enough to make all the pancakes at once. If you do have a large griddle, you can obviously skip the oven and cookie sheet routine.
  • There is a delicate balance between the thickness of the pancake batter and the temperature of the griddle. For thick batter use a lower temperature, and for thin batter use a higher temperature. High temperature with a thick batter leaves an uncooked center, and low-temperature with a thin batter makes them thin and dry.
  • Adjust the thickness of the batter by adding a little extra water or flour, but be sure to do it right away during the mix and don’t over-stir. If you stir the batter too much, you knock down its ability to rise properly and make fluffy pancakes.
  • For the corn meal, we recommend the coarse-ground corn meal from Bob’s Red Mill®. It will give your pancakes a more pronounced corn flavor and a satisfyingly chewy texture that you won’t get from a finely-ground corn meal.

Serves: 3 to 6
Preparation time: 20 to 30 minutes