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Traditional Sourdough Pancakes

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Sourdough Pancakes made with whole grain flour.

With a wonderfully soft and tender crumb, these sourdough pancakes make a lovely companion to lazy Saturday mornings, especially when you pair them with pats of salted butter, a drizzle of maple syrup and a mug of strong tea.

Since I started baking sourdough bread nearly a decade ago, I’ve always needed a use for my leftover, discarded starter. And these pancakes, sweetened by the slightest trace of honey, are such a perfect use for it.  I’ve meddled and toiled with this recipe over the years, making small adjustments here or there: leaving out the honey, beating in whole eggs, soaking the batter overnight.

And I finally have a version I’m really happy with: Marvelously rich with the flavor of whole grain flour, but tender, too, with a soft light texture.

Pancakes Are Great for Spent Starter

To maintain lively and active starter for sourdough bread baking, you must feed it a slurry of water and flour.  This carbohydrate-rich slurry nourishes and provides food for the bacteria that give good bread its characteristic tartness and it also feeds the yeast that give bread a lofty rise. Bread needs lively and active yeast to give it a wonderful rise an airy crumb. And recently fed, bubbly starter does just that.

But, maintaining sourdough is all about timing. Once you feed your starter, and it bubbles up and doubles, those lively yeast will exhaust their food source and the starter will fall. This spent starter won’t make for good bread, but it’s perfect for making sourdough pancakes.

How to Make Tender Sourdough Pancakes

Tender pancakes achieve their loft through leavening.  When you make pancakes the leavening comes from the natural chemical reaction between acidic and alkaline ingredients.

Thanks to all its friendly lactobacillus bacteria, spent sourdough starter is very acidic (that’s what makes it wonderfully tart!). When you combine sourdough starter with baking soda, which is very alkaline, the pancake batter will bubble up beautifully – and a bubbly batter makes for airier pancakes with a tender crumb.

But that’s not all you need to make fluffy pancakes. Whipped egg whites will lighten your pancakes when you gently fold them into the batter, and also give the batter enough structure to hold the air that will make your pancakes light and fluffy instead of dense or chewy.

Use a Whole Grain Flour

When baking and cooking for my family, I like to keep our grains (mostly!) whole. Not only do whole grains offer the clear benefit of higher dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals (when properly prepared), but they also offer incredible, complex and rich flavor.

The problem is that many whole wheat flours are very high in protein and are flecked with dark bits of bran. That makes for great bread, but not so great pancakes.

So, instead of opting for plain whole wheat flour; make your pancakes from white or ivory wheat. These flours are still 100% whole grain, but they’re made from a softer wheat with a lower protein and a much lighter color. That means lighter, softer pancakes that are still whole grain.

Whole grain sourdough pancakes served with maple syrup.

Sourdough Pancakes
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Recipe type: Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Author:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1 dozen pancakes
Wonderfully fluffy and delicious with their rich whole grain flavor and mild tartness, these sourdough pancakes are a great way to use up leftover sourdough starter.
Ingredients
Instructions
The Night Before
  1. Toss the flour, milk, sourdough starter and sea salt together in a blender, and blend until they form a smooth batter. Pour the batter into a mixing bowl, and cover it with cling film or with a tight-fitting lid (this bowl set works well).
  2. Let the batter sit, covered, at room temperature overnight, or 8 to 12 hours.
The Next Morning
  1. Beat the egg yolks together with honey and melted butter. When they're uniformly combined, beat the egg yolk mixture into the pancake batter you made the night before.
  2. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites with the baking soda until they hold stiff peaks.
  3. Gently fold one third of the whipped egg whites into the pancake batter. Continue folding the remaining egg whites, one third at a time, until you’ve added them all. Incorporate the egg whites into the bowl slowly, carefully and gently, leaving some streaks of unbroken whites, until the batter is light and fluffy. The key to a light sourdough pancake is to avoid deflating the whites.
  4. Set your oven to warm, and place a baking sheet in the oven on the middle rack.
  5. Heat a cast iron skillet or pancake griddle over medium heat, and melt a touch of butter in the pan. When the butter foams, pour a ladleful (approximately ¼ to ⅓ cup) of pancake batter into the pan. Let it cook without disturbance until you see bubbles forming in the center of the pancake. Flip the pancake and continue cooking it 1 to 2 minutes further until cooked through. Transfer the pancake to the baking sheet in the oven to keep it warm.
  6. Continue cooking pancakes, one at a time, and adding more butter to the pan as needed until you’ve exhausted the batter.
  7. Serve with additional butter, maple syrup or homemade blueberry syrup.
Notes
Gluten-free? If you are looking for a gluten-free sourdough pancake recipe, you might try this one.

Grain-free? You might give these almond flour pancakes a go.

How to Get Your Sourdough Starter Going

Sourdough pancakes are a great use of discarded sourdough starter. That’s the starter that’s removed from your jar before you feed it to make bread.

To get your starter going you’ll need flour, water and time. Adding a bit of an already established starter (from a friend or purchased online) can help, too. Here’s an easy tutorial on getting started.

I use unbleached, artisan bread flour from Bob’s Red Mill to feed my sourdough starter because it produces particularly reliable results, and you can purchase it at most natural food stores as well as online here.  While I keep the starter on bread flour, I bake with a variety of whole grains including ancient and heritage wheats, white wheat, spelt, einkorn and rye.

Whole Grain Sourdough Maple Syrup Served with Real Maple Syrup

Our Other Sourdough Recipes

Once your sourdough starter is established, bubbling and doubling with each feeding, you’re ready to use it. You can use it to bake bread (of course!), but you can also use the discarded starter not only to make these pancakes, but also noodles, dumplings, crumpets and a lot more.

There’s loads of sourdough recipes in The Nourished Kitchen, so get your hands on a copy if you haven’t already.

In the mean time, here’s some of our favorite sourdough recipes:

No-Knead Bread is a pretty simple, hands-off, easy bread to make for sourdough newcomers.

Rye Sourdough Boule is also fairly easy to make, and has a pleasant, mild flavor.

Sourdough Rye Crêpes are a great way to use up sourdough starter, just like these pancakes.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Challah is always fun, and it’s gorgeous topped with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.

Sourdough Noodles can be made from discarded starter and they have a delightful tartness that blends beautifully with butter, cream and fresh herbs.

Sourdough Pelmeni are traditional meat-filled Russian dumplings served with browned butter. While they’re a little more involved, they’re certainly worth your time.

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Reader Interactions

What people are saying

  2. This sounds great and I would like to try making the starter.
    How much is ‘a bit of flour and water’? Tablespoon, half a cup, a cup or more?
    Is it left uncovered, you mentioned it collects yeast particles from the air?
    Does any flour work?

    • Any flour works as long as it hasen’t been bleached. I used a half cup each of filtered water and whole wheat flour (I also tried water and brown rice sorghum flour with another starter), followed by everyday feedings of 1/4 cup of flour and 2 tablespoons of water. When the starter looks bubbly it is ready. If it starts to make a liquid that seperates it should be fed and stirred and put into the fridge. When sitting at room temperature it should have a cloth covering it so air can flow in but bugs stay out. In the fridge you should use a lid.

  4. Thank you! The recipe I’ve been waiting for!
    For fruit syrup, how much butter do you you use for a cup of fruit juice? Just mix the melted butter with juice, or do you cook it too?

  6. Where can you purchase a flour sifter to remove the bran? Most sifters are not fine enough and essentially you are just aerating the flour.

  9. Do you use fed/active or unfed/inactive sourdough starter for the pancakes?

    I see that they will sit with the new flour for 8 hours so perhaps an unfed/inactive sourdough (such as the amount you “throw off” when feeding sourdough) would be ok?

    Thanks for another great recipe!

  10. Can you make a sour dough starter with gluten free flours (rice, potato,sorgum or favabean). I would love to have some sourdough bread but it has to be gluten free

  11. I’ve been on a sourdough kick lately and made a starter out of one part coconut water kefir and one part sprouted spelt flour. It was ready in 12 hours! Amazing… And after feeding it for 3 days, I made this sourdough chocolate cake from the gal at Whole Intentions: http://www.grainmillwagon.com/sourdough-chocolate-fudge-cake/ It was incredible! And I am planning on making the pizza dough next: http://www.grainmillwagon.com/one-ingredient-sourdough-pizza-crust/. Thanks for the pancake recipe – I may just make it with all starter…

  12. These were lovely. i’ve been meaning to try them for a long time because I am one of those people who can’t stand to throw away the “extra’ starter when i feed. i put peaches in them which I had frozen from the summer. mmmm, thanks.

  13. Hi!
    I’m in love with your blog. It’s been such a blessing. My question is can I use sprouted flour in this recipe? I assume I can, but just thought I’d make sure.
    Thx!!

  14. A ‘bit’ of flour and water would be 1/2 cup of flour and enough water to make it the consistency of batter.
    I only use rye flour for the sour dough. Let it set uncovered or cover it with a thin cloth. Real sour dough is only made from rye flour and water.

    • “Real sour dough is only made from rye flour and water.”

      What an absurd statement.

      What about San Francisco Sourdoughs or Pain au Levain – both wheat-based sourdoughs? What about injera – a teff-based sourdough?

      • Yeah, wheat or teff is just as real as rye. Rye just happens to be an easier grain to ferment, but doesn’t make it any more real than ferments made with other grains. With wheat, I think it helps to leave a little of the bran/germ if sifted. But the problems with wheat are mainly when doing a spontaneous ferment, from scratch. If using an established sourdough, in my experience, it’s easy to get the bubbles going.

  15. Hi, I love you posts! I started my sourdough starter from your recipe today…and I would love to try these pancakes. My son loves kale pancakes…but I want to use them with this recipe, and just add the kale…should I cook the kale and blend everything or blend uncooked kale with most of the recipe then add the sourdough starter before making them?

  16. Just a question about the flour…. I’m assuming its wholemeal flour and the sifting is to remove the bran???

  18. I have followed your site for years and really love it—but I still feel intimidated by culturing and fermenting and starters. They seem to need so much attention and be so finicky (I’ve had a failed kombucha experiment) and I’m not sure where to start—which starter type, which recipe, etc. But this sourdough pancake recipe, which you just posted on facebook, seems so doable and easy and delicious! I can’t WAIT to give it a try.

  19. So I made these pancakes today with my new baby (a sourdough starter I got from a friend). They would have made excellent English muffins, but they weren’t really pancakey, too chewy and bready. I’ve narrowed the problem down to one of two things – I only had one egg (tomorrow is grocery day) and my batter was a bit thick. Do you think the second egg and maybe some more milk (or butter or coconut oil?) would make them more pancakey or do these turn out a bit on the chewy/English muffiny side for you, too?

    I am pretty excited that my starter did rise and tastes like real sourdough, though! Definitely time for some bread baking soon!

  20. Delicious pancake recipe!
    Why do all sourdough quick-bread recipes include baking soda?
    Isn’t the natural sourdough enough to leaven the product?
    Thank you.

    • Sourdough quick-bread recipes use baking soda as a leavening agent. Since the rise in these recipes needs to happen quickly, we rely on baking soda. Natural Sourdough requires time (just like a yeasted dough) to rise.

      • Also sourdough is acid, baking soda is alkaline so the sourdough releases the carbon in the baking soda (or bicarbonate of soda as its called in the UK). This makes the pancakes extra bubbly. There is actually no need to rely on leavening your mix overnight as the bicarbonate will do the work for you.

        • Yes, sourdough is acid, and baking soda is alkaline which is why we combine them right before cooking. That said, this recipe doesn’t rely on overnight soaking for leavening; rather, that practice increases the bioavailability of minerals in the additional flours. As this recipe uses starter that hasn’t been proofed, the dough will not necessarily rise which is why it’s important to use baking soda.

          • The baking soda also sweetens the batter some for those who don’t care for the sour taste. My son thought that the pancakes were too sour, so I added another 1/2 tsp to the rest of the batter and he liked them much better.

  21. Hi Jenny,
    I find that the batter is too thick when I first make it, and that it needs some liquid the night before. Would it be okay to use leftover whey from cheese making for this?

  22. I accidentally added the eggs back soda and salt to the 2nd sitting and let it sit out for 8! Hours is it still good?

  24. Thank you for your recipe. I just made the most fab sourdough pancakes for the first time using your instructions for the pancakes and starter. I wasn’t sure the started smelled right and I hoped it would turn out well. It did and it was so easy.

    My girls approved the recipe and both only managed one pancake as it is quite filling to my traditional American pancake recipe.

    I will continue to use this starter and recipe. I’ll even try out the bread recipe as I have always wanted to make my own sourdough bread.

    The k you for your easy to follow instructions.

  25. Oh my, I am in love!!! I will never use another pancake recipe. I must confess that I am not a purist. I have never followed a recipe exactly and this was no exception but I don’t think you would mind my tweaks as they are just about my personal preferences. I will share them though as I believe they complimented your original. I mean you no offence.

    I used 3 eggs instead of 2 and 1/4 cup of almond meal. I also added a dash of vanilla ( i just love vanilla) and 2 tbl coconut sugar and finally about 1/3 of almond milk.

    The batter became so light and fluffy it was like a cloud in a bowl and even though one of the pancakes was over cooked because I got caught up doing dishes, it ended up staying light and fluffy and you couldn’t tell I’d forgotten it in the pan. The rich tanginess of these pancakes was something else altogether. I’m in love….did I say that already?

  26. just made these for breakfast and was surprised at how fluffy and light these pancakes were. made with spelt flour they had a subtle nutty taste that went perfect with the berry sauce and yoghurt I topped them with. definately my number one pancake now.

  28. How delightful! I’m going to get a starter going once I get some free time and these will be the first thing I make. Thank you for including the information about why it’s important to ferment grains if we want to enjoy them and be healthy. I think that’s something that hardly anyone knows these days.

  31. What happens if you make a sourdough starter and have to leave on vacation. Can it sit for two weeks without being tended to.

  32. I’m traveling and forgot to write down the sourdough pancake recipe from your book. It’s a recipe that is was basically sourdough starter, baking soda, and maybe one other thing. Would you be willing to post that here? I won’t be home for 4 weeks and I’m traveling with my sourdough starter.

  33. Wow.. This looks fantastic! I’ll have to make this for my husband for his birthday breakfast. I already have sourdough starter in my fridge that my husband made from the method his mother has been practicing for years.
    Thanks for pointing out the value of good grains. I think we tend to quickly make a villain out of just one ingredient. Like you pointed out, it’s a lot more complex than that I believe.

    I have a Korean cooking blog with step-by-step tutorial videos, focused on healthy and simple recipes. And fermentation has been a big part of my life since fermented food is a big part of Korean cuisine. I just recently found out about your blog. What an inspiration!

    Thanks for the great content!

    Sun

  35. I have to count carbs because of blood sugar issues, any idea what the fermenting process does to the carbs? I would think it would lower it somewhat but am not finding any answers online.

  36. I have made these twice. They are very good. But. Mine have a almost bitter taste. Would this mean that my starter was not right

  37. After mixing my starter and flour together, I have a ball of dough…that looks better than the ball I’ve got going for your (no-knead) sourdough bread…is this what I’m supposed to have at this step or should it be more batter-like?

  38. Hi, these look fantastic! I use almost solely sprouted flours, but can’t seem to have luck feeding a sourdough starter with them. Do you have any advice?

    • I don’t recommend sprouted flours for sourdough starter – though you can bake sourdough bread with sprouted flours. Sprouted flours are higher in most vitamins than regular or whole grain flour, and then that usually means that your starter needs to be fed more frequently (oddly). Also, in sprouted flours, some of the complex starches have already been broken down so it’s harder to proof. I use bread flour in my starter and then I typically use a 100% whole grain flour in my sourdoughs. I use sprouted flours for quick breads, pastries and cookies.

      • Thanks so much for the response! Not to pester, but if you were to bake sourdough with sprouted flour (not the starter, just the additional flour!) would you compensate in any way?

  39. Loved this recipe, thanks. Wondering can I use refrigerated starter or only room temp starter?
    TIA

  40. Hi there! I love your site. I have been making the pancakes for over a year. I think the recipe has changed recently? I can’t do milk and am wondering if there is anyway I can get the older version?