"Uncle Norman's" (Buckwheat) Pancakes

I've been making my Dad's pancake recipe for years, with almost no variation. It's the recipe I grew up on, so the sentimental value is pretty high. Recently, though, my wife has been asking me to try the recipe using buckwheat flour. I was a bit unsure of the consequences of this sort of alteration, so I called the source. Dad said that he recalled not having very much success with buckwheat flour, but that I might try using half buckwheat and have all-purpose flour. I followed his sage advice (don't tell him -- he'll have a heart attack), and the pancakes turned out quite well. The buckwheat flour gives them a nice texture, and they seem to soak up a bit more maple syrup, as well.

My one grumble is a technical problem, not a matter of product. The buckwheat flour makes for a browner batter, so it's a little tougher to tell when the pancakes are cooked enough. That's just a matter of practice, though.

My wife suggested that we try letting the better rest for a while next time, so that will most likely be my next experiment.

I also incorporated Mom's suggestion of using powered buttermilk, and that worked pretty well, although next time I'll actually sift it into the rest of the dry ingredients, rather than adding it afterward.

10/5/08 -- Pancakes

Sometimes you just have to try something new.

My dad makes legendary pancakes. They're light, fluffy, and go great with real maple syrup. When my mother's family gathers for the annual Week At the Beach, Dad gets roped into making pancakes at least two mornings. For the past few years, I've been his assistant in this process, and I can pretty well replicate his pancakes.

But, they require buttermilk. And when I'm at home, I don't really think about making pancakes until I get up on a Sunday morning, so it's pretty rare that there is buttermilk in the house at that time. Thus, I either have to plan to make pancakes a day in advance (Hah!), or I have to go to the store before breakfast. This is not something that typically appeals to me. So, this morning, at some risk to my inheritance, I went looking for a non-buttermilk pancake recipes.

I ended up using this recipe from Allrecipes.com, modifying it according to the suggestions in the comment from Esther on January 3, 2006 (I did not chill the batter, but I took her other advice). The best of these ideas was the addition of cinnamon to the batter. This gave the pancakes a nice, light cinnamon flavor that complimented the maple syrup beautifully. The one thing that didn't work was her suggestion to cut the milk down to 3/4 cup from a full cup. The first pair of pancakes were pretty heavy, so I added more milk to the batter, and the rest came out nice and light.

My wife felt that these were pretty good, but needed butter and/or syrup. The pancakes were very porous, so they soaked up a lot of whatever you put on them. My view of pancakes is that they are really just vehicles for syrup, so this wasn't a problem for me. All in all, a pretty good recipe.

Dad's are still better, though.