This post is inspired by the Slate.com series called "You're doing it wrong," about recipe revisions.
I found a Belgian-style waffle iron at a yard sale a couple of years ago and started experimenting with recipes. For pancakes on weekends, my family had long loved the Wheat Germ Pancakes recipe in the Colorado Cache Cookbook, which calls for flour and butter and a little leavening with buttermilk and separated eggs, the whites beaten to soft peaks and folded in to make the pancakes light and fluffy. We figured waffles would require a different batter and tried an assortment of recipes, from Cooks' Illustrated, Joy of Cooking, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and a few others. (Can you see where this is going?)
One day, I decided to whip up a batch of our favorite Wheat Germ Pancakes. I plugged in the waffle iron. The waffles turned out airy and crisp, but too airy, without enough substance: there was no there there, in the words of Gertrude Stein. Another recipe fail. About then I found the Slate.com pancakes recipe, which asserted that there is no need to whip the egg whites. The next time I heated up the waffle iron and cooked up a batch of the Wheat Germ Pancakes but this time without separating and beating the egg whites, they were perfect.
Our Favorite Pancake and Waffle Recipe
This recipe is adapted from the 1978 Colorado Cache Cookbook's recipe for Wheat Germ Pancakes. One of the things we love about this recipe is the ratio of flour to liquid, which is about 1 part flour to 2 parts liquid, the opposite of most pancake recipes. These pancakes are always light and tasty.
1 cup white wheat flour
1/4 cup toasted wheat germ (or you can substitute the same quantity of ground flaxseed or a superfood blend such as Nude Food)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda*
1 teaspoon baking powder*
2 cups buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, you can substitute 1 cup plain lowfat yogurt and 1 cup milk)
2 eggs, beaten
3-4 tablespoons butter, melted
*Cut this quantity in half if you are making these at an altitude of 5,000 feet.
Stir the dry ingredients together in a good-sized bowl. In another bowl or a quart-sized measuring cup, mix the buttermilk (or milk and yogurt) and the two beaten eggs. Stir the liquids into the flour mixture. Stir in the melted butter. Cook on a waffle iron until brown. You can hold them in the oven on a warm plate covered with a sheet of foil until serving.
Variation: Stir some grated cheddar and/or grated apple into the dry ingredients before mixing in the liquid mixture.
I found a Belgian-style waffle iron at a yard sale a couple of years ago and started experimenting with recipes. For pancakes on weekends, my family had long loved the Wheat Germ Pancakes recipe in the Colorado Cache Cookbook, which calls for flour and butter and a little leavening with buttermilk and separated eggs, the whites beaten to soft peaks and folded in to make the pancakes light and fluffy. We figured waffles would require a different batter and tried an assortment of recipes, from Cooks' Illustrated, Joy of Cooking, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and a few others. (Can you see where this is going?)
One day, I decided to whip up a batch of our favorite Wheat Germ Pancakes. I plugged in the waffle iron. The waffles turned out airy and crisp, but too airy, without enough substance: there was no there there, in the words of Gertrude Stein. Another recipe fail. About then I found the Slate.com pancakes recipe, which asserted that there is no need to whip the egg whites. The next time I heated up the waffle iron and cooked up a batch of the Wheat Germ Pancakes but this time without separating and beating the egg whites, they were perfect.
Our Favorite Pancake and Waffle Recipe
This recipe is adapted from the 1978 Colorado Cache Cookbook's recipe for Wheat Germ Pancakes. One of the things we love about this recipe is the ratio of flour to liquid, which is about 1 part flour to 2 parts liquid, the opposite of most pancake recipes. These pancakes are always light and tasty.
1 cup white wheat flour
1/4 cup toasted wheat germ (or you can substitute the same quantity of ground flaxseed or a superfood blend such as Nude Food)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda*
1 teaspoon baking powder*
2 cups buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, you can substitute 1 cup plain lowfat yogurt and 1 cup milk)
2 eggs, beaten
3-4 tablespoons butter, melted
*Cut this quantity in half if you are making these at an altitude of 5,000 feet.
Stir the dry ingredients together in a good-sized bowl. In another bowl or a quart-sized measuring cup, mix the buttermilk (or milk and yogurt) and the two beaten eggs. Stir the liquids into the flour mixture. Stir in the melted butter. Cook on a waffle iron until brown. You can hold them in the oven on a warm plate covered with a sheet of foil until serving.
Variation: Stir some grated cheddar and/or grated apple into the dry ingredients before mixing in the liquid mixture.
