Sourdough Pancakes

My basic recipe for sourdough pancakes:
2 cups sourdough
1 egg
1 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 T oil

A good sourdough pancake starts its life the night before it’s going to be cooked. In a large bowl, preferably non-metal, add 2 cups flour, 2 cups water, and your sourdough starter. Mix it up and let it sit overnight. In the morning, take out 2 cups of the batter, and put the rest in refrigerator for later use, as this is now your starter. Beat the egg with the salt, sugar, and oil, and then gently blend it into your batter.

When your griddle is hot enough, sprinkle the baking soda over the batter and gently blend it in. In a minute or two the batter will start to bubble as the acid in the starter reacts with the baking soda(NaHCO3). I like to fry my pancakes in butter for a crisp edge around the pancake. Butter will burn if the griddle is too hot, and I often find myself wiping down my griddle with a paper towel midway through the cooking. You don’t really need to oil the griddle to get a good pancake with this recipe, but that’s the way I like it.

One of the many things that can be added to pancakes to boost the nutritional profile is flax meal. A 1/4 cup of flax meal added to the basic recipe gives it a nice nutty flavor. In experimenting with blueberries, I found that I liked them best when I let them sizzle for a minute in the butter before pouring the pancake batter over them.