Most Saturday mornings are packed – we’ve decided on a project, see us in the truck on the way to the nursery. Maybe we’re off on a road trip. It could be us at our godson’s baseball game. But, on those rarest of Saturday mornings. The ones where we find ourselves snuggled under messy sheets and cats begging for breakfast, we make up a batch of scratch buttermilk pancakes.
While the pan of bacon is getting crispy in the oven and the house smells like that sweet/smokey flavor, I whisk my dry and wet ingredients together in my favorite jadeite batter bowl. I like to leave it sitting for a few minutes while I preheat the skillet. This gives time for the buttermilk to interact with the baking soda and turns the batter pillowy soft.
I fill a few with blueberries or chocolate chips if we’re in the mood, that’s the best part of this recipe – it’s great plain or filled. We eat them on our pancake plates. The ones with a strawberry and lattice design. They just remind me of sun-soaked mornings and hot black coffee on the kitchen island. Bruce and kiwi fight over the leftover bacon, and we skip lunch.
I may be waxing the mundane, but I’ve learned these past few years about the happiness that can be found in the simplest of movements. The things we look forward to that don’t seem to matter, can matter the most. So I thought I would welcome you in on our Saturday Morning Buttermilk Pancakes too.
Excerpt from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,—if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn’s hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call “God’s birds,” because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
George Eliot
Saturday Morning Scratch Buttermilk Pancakes
Fluffy and flavorful – perfect for packing with chocolate chips or blueberries!
- Prep Time: 10 mintues
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 0 hours
- Yield: 10 1x
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 egg, room temp
1 1/3 cup buttermilk, room temp
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients. In another bowl, whisk the wet ingredients. Combine the two just until a batter forms. You don’t want to whisk out all the clumps.
Set the batter aside while slowly preheating the skillet to medium heat, this give time for the buttermilk to interact with the baking soda and make a fluffy batter.
Scoop out about 1/3 cup of the batter onto the buttered and preheated skillet. Turn once the sides have started to set, about 2 minutes. Flip and continue to cook for about 30 seconds. The goal is to cook the batter 3/4ths through on the first pour, and the rest on the flip.
Continue with the rest of the batter. The batter will not keep longer than 30 minutes.
Serve with your favorite toppings and enjoy!
Notes
If making blueberry or chocolate chip pancakes, don’t add directly to the batter. Pour your batter onto the skillet, wait a few seconds, then add the mix-ins individually onto each pancake. This insures it won’t stick or burn on the skillet. Take the back of a fork and push the mix-ins into the pancake creating a small layer of batter over the mix-in’s so they won’t burn on the flip.
