Yes, I know ‘soaked’ pancakes sound kind of soggy, but believe me they aren’t! These pancakes are great and they really ‘stick to your ribs’; they are very filling! Our girls, who used to eat piles of white flour pancakes, can only eat two each. They are similar to the soaked oatmeal in that this is a breakfast (or snack) that will keep you going for hours. When I first starting reading Nourishing Traditions I thought soaking flour was a bit odd. But like other grains, flours (especially whole wheat) can be hard to digest. But whole wheat (especially freshly ground) has so many more nutrients than white.
So, what to do? Well, Sally Fallon says to soak all flours before cooking with them (or use flour ground from sprouted grains), to get rid of these pesky anti-nutrients. If you soak the flour, your body will be able to utilize more of the nutrition in the whole wheat, which is the main point of eating whole grains, correct?
Tips for making wonderful pancakes:
- I make double batches sometimes and then freeze the pancakes individually for weekday breakfasts.
- Do not substitute white flour when making this recipe, soaked white flour pancakes turn out kind of gummy
- These pancake take longer to cook than white flour non-soaked pancakes. Be sure to leave them on the griddle longer.
- make your own yogurt, or buy whole milk yogurt in large containers (32 oz or higher).
- If you’re making a big batch, keep them in the oven at 200 until serving. These can be dried out too for ‘crispy pancakes’ and they are yummy!
Soaked Pancakes
Rating: 4 forks (key)
Difficulty: Easy
Page in NT: 478
Yield:
- Makes 16-20 pancakes
Ingredients:
- 2 cups freshly ground whole wheat pastry flour (or spelt, kamut flour)
- 2 cups yogurt, buttermilk or kefir
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 T melted butter
Preparation:
Soak flour in yogurt (or buttermilk/kefir) in warm place for 12-24 hours. After soaking time, stir in other ingredients and add water to obtain the desired thinness. Cook on a hot, oiled griddle or cast iron skillet. The pancakes cook longer than regular pancakes, and have a slightly chewy texture and mild sour taste, which is very pleasing. Serve with melted butter, real grade B maple syrup, raw honey, berry syrup, or fruit butter.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
I make this recipe every single day for my 4 kids. It’s enough to feed all of them (ages 10, 6, 4, 2) and one adult. We all love them! We no longer buy garbage (boxes of cereal) and the kids don’t miss it at all!
Try substituting 2 cups of rolled oats for the flour. A yummy variation!
I have a grain grinder, but for those who don’t but want to have freshly ground wheat for their pancakes, I can recommend: http://www.suegregg.com/recipes/breakfasts/blenderbatterwaffles/blenderbatterwaffles.htm
You use just a blender with whole wheat berries (found in health food stores) to get freshly ground wheat. The recipe includes an overnight soaking as well.
This is our twice-a-week pancake recipe. Thank goodness my 12-year-old daughter has learned to make it because she is so much more awake in the morning than I!
LunarChick… this is a great suggestion, thank you!!
Peggy… wow thank you for sharing this link! I will definitely be making this for tomorrow’s breakfast!! (LunarChick… with part oatmeal too)! I have been lusting after this really expensive grain mill but can’t afford it, maybe now I will be satisfied without it for awhile longer: http://bit.ly/6XakCX
Sam… how great that you guys are off cereal completely! What lucky kids to have these pancakes every morning…
I love these pancakes so much, I practically make them with my eyes closed LOL I soak my kamut flour in kefir, and have started cooking them in coconut oil rather than butter. My favourite combo: bananas, strawberries and bacon
Hi Kim, love your blog, I love nourishing traditions, and love your personal insight to these recipes. I especially love the honesty and comments about your husband, I think our husbands are related! Same attitude! Anyway keep up the good work, I’m sure these pancakes will go down a treat. I’m off to soak the flour now! I am from the Sunshine Coast in Australia – isn’t the web great!! Fleur x
I love your blog, I’m so happy to have found it! I love your honest and personable voice when writing
I was wondering, can I make these pancakes with buckwheat flour? Or perhaps part buckwheat, part almond? I have celiac disease so wheat is out. I just don’t know what GF flours can be soaked! Any advice?
Arielle… thanks for the comment! In Nourishing traditions, Sally does give a variation of these pancakes and she makes them with half buckwheat flour, half spelt. I know that’s not gluten free though. So you may try half almond half buckwheat. You can soak that mixture if you’re using a commercial almond flour (not soaked). If you make your own flour from soaked almonds then I would put the almond flour in after the buckwheat has soaked. Please email me kim@thenourishingcook.com if you want to talk further, and let us know how this turns out!! I would love to hear.
I have always enjoyed this recipe, and everyone I’ve served it too has loved it too (ie, people who don’t know/care about the benefits of soaking or whole wheat).
I’ve had good luck with this recipe, but usually use Sue Gregg’s blender batter recipe. It is so, so simple, and you can make it with whatever grains you have. Arielle, check out the blender batter recipe because it can be made gluten free easily! I also do big batches of pancakes and freeze them to toast in the toaster for a weekday breakfast.
Is that a photo of your pancakes? It’s a great picture! Good work
Alyss thank-you so much for all of your comments! I agree about the blender batter recipe, it is amazing!
For Arielle -
I make these pancakes with 1/2 buckwheat and 1/2 wheat – I know you said you can’t have wheat, but the buckwheat is fine soaked, so I’m sure you could add in any other kind of flour with it. I’m excited to try the oats in the recipe ala Lunar chick! I make these once a week and freeze them for my boys – I was wondering if everyone microwaves them to reheat? The men in my life have no patience for oven reheating, and I am outnumbered here!!
You could put them in the toaster instead of the microwave. That’s what I do and it works quite well, and there’s no “cancer box” to worry about:)
We also quit using the microwave a few years ago even our then teenage son. I have rewarmed pancakes right in my cast iron pan, the same one used for cooking in, it needs to be on a bit lower heat setting than when originally cooking them thought so that they don’t over brown of burn. (if you have more than one then use a couple and its twice as fast.) It is still faster than waiting for them to cook in the first place, if you do not have a toaster oven. I use the toaster oven just because it is convenient, or before the toaster oven was bought a regular toaster on a lower setting does great. Hope your men will come around. Mine happily did.
Due to sensitivities, I make this recipe without eggs and the pancakes are still very good! Also, I bake mine in the oven for 10 minutes at 190 °C (375 °F). Firstly, I don’t have a griddle and secondly, I don’t like working with my food that much (such as the flipping). I guess this version is more oven-cakes than pancakes. lol.
Thank you for the ideas Elizabeth. I was wondering if it would work with out eggs, as my husband has a harder time digesting eggs. I only made these for the first time the last 2 mornings. Our son and his wife, who is new to our family and its ‘natural’ ways happily devoured them and thoroughly enjoyed them.
= happy mom. Can’t wait to try the oven method.
Kim, just found your site and I’ll be making regular visits. Fist off, I’m a GUY and found out about NT from a recent acquaintance who has been into it for a while. I checked out Sally’s video clips and then got the book. My wife and I have followed many dietary paths over the years, not for weight loss, but for better health in general. From food combining (the Diamond Method) to Aajonus’ Raw diet, to the Zone Diet, to Metabolic Typing, all of these resulted in new awarenesses. But NT brings a deeper perspective as well as techniques for getting the maximum food value from the foods we eat. Just because a package shows various amounts of protein, fats and minerals in its contents, is no indication that one’s body will ever convert or absorb those amounts! NT has unlocked the secrets of longevity by Dr. Price’s observations and connections between sources of food, preparing food, and long life.
As for my results so far, I’ve made the “curds and whey” from raw milk and it turned out amazing! The cream cheese, without any seasoning, tastes like goat cheese (very similar to a fine goat cheese I had at a local restaurant last week). The first use of the whey is a work in progress right now: sauerkraut. I’ll let you know in a week or so how that turned out.
I’ve also made kefir and buttermilk. The kefir took longer to culture than listed in NT, but that might be because our house is about 69 degrees here in Burbank, California–I’m sure summertime will shorten conversion times. The kefir is absolutely wonderful! The buttermilk turned out more gooey than I remember store-bought buttermilk, but hey, store-bought is not the real thing. However, I found that if I added some water to a half glass of buttermilk, then blended it with a handheld mini-blender, it tasted perfect! So now, the buttermilk lasts twice as long. Actually, I have to make more buttermilk as I use it to soak the flour for pancakes!
Before NT, to make pancakes I was grinding organic whole grains, adding eggs, salt, melted organic coconut oil and water for the batter. The result was more like flatcakes–quite hearty and filling (especially with more coconut oil or raw butter, and organic maple syrup). But I had no idea I wasn’t getting the full measure of nutrients from the grains. Now with soaking the grains, the result was quite amazing–fluffy and delicious! Interestingly, they weren’t sour like Sally said they would be. Making it even better, is that I made a half recipe and still got 16 pancakes out of it! And as far as it taking longer to cook on the griddle, it actually took way less time than with my previous flatcakes. So, the NT pancakes are a big hit for us.
Before NT, I had got a recipe to make a super-blend of various grains, nuts and seeds for sprouting. I’m glad I read NT’s section on sprouts–we now eat them lightly steamed with coconut oil and salt, or like today, steamed and tucked into an omelet.
I’m looking forward to the results and posts from your cooking quest.
To your health…
Randy
and making The pancakes
Forgot to mention that I grind our whole grains in a simple coffee grinder. I can grind about 1/2 cup at a time and it does the job. I also have a stainless steel Oster Commercial blender but I haven’t tried to grind grains in it.
We are currently on a GF diet – has anyone made these GF? I suppose I could try doing the rolled oats as suggested by Lunar Chick
I made them with one half millet (it was some flaked millet I had to use up) and half oat flakes. I am sure soaked whole millet or quinoa would be fine too for that matter, as they are soft grains & they have a similar texture. After soaking each in separate jars I poured the millet into my blender and blended well and added homemade ghee I had, instead of butter to the blending mixture to get it incorporated. I stirred the soaked oats into the blended part in the mixing bowl. They turned out great and were delicious.
If use a sprouted spelt flour would i need to soak the flour overnight?
Thank you
This recipe was a success. I’ll never go back to white flour pancakes now. I used buttermilk. Also dried them out and my toddler loved crunching on them. I’ll be experimenting with variations in the future. I was thinking about adding parmasan cheese to the mix and then dry them out for cheesy snacks but not sure about frying the cheese, it might burn. I’ll see. Will try with different flours too.
Kim–thank goodness you are blogging your way through Sally’s wonderful cookbook. I am at the beach and wanted to make sourdough pancakes, and voila, I found the recipe on your site (I left NT at home). You are a lifesaver! We are making the pancakes now, and just fyi, we added 1 cup of water to get them to the desired consistency.
Jill-I think you will still get the leavening benefit from soaking overnight your sprouted flour. In the morning your batter will look like a yeast risen bread dough. Sally Fallon has also told me it is still good to soak sprouted flour for an extra nutritional boost!
Kimberly
Kimberly… so glad I could be of service! hee hee. My goal is for this blog to be a resource, but I never want people to think that I could replace the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. There is so much information in the cookbook that could not be in a mere recipe. Thanks for the link back!!
I am so excited to try grinding grains in my coffee blender type blender. I have been wondering if the blender would work.
My sister is sending me the book, so I haven’t had a chance to read it fully. But my partner is from Africa and reports that indeed the women ground the flour, but removed the bran–and usually gave it to the chickens. I am stil undecided if I should follow this tradition–it still leaves a brown flour. Or if the soaking makes it all digestable..
The soaking is for easier digestion, yes. So if you soak the flour overnight it’ll be fine.
Oh I love this recipe… So quick and easy… I half it for breakfast once to twice a week and my daughter thinks she is in heaven… I also use the sour raw milk up this way with no complaints! Thanks so much!
Are the 2 Tbsp melted butter for the mixture or for cooking?
Hi! I was just wondering if I’m supposed to cover the soaking mixture while it’s soaking? Does covering or not covering make a difference? I’ve got a small cockroach problem in my kitchen and I don’t want to leave a tasty snack out on the counter for the little pests.
Thanks.