These sourdough oatmeal pancakes are made with whole wheat flour, oats, tangy buttermilk, and sourdough starter!
This recipe is very similar to my oatmeal griddle cake recipe, which does not use sourdough discard. You should use that recipe if you don’t have sourdough starter discard.
Why Sourdough?
So this is another sourdough discard recipe. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a lot of sourdough discard. I keep starter on our kitchen counter so that I’m always prepared to make sourdough at a mere 20 hours’ notice! (That was a little joke for you.) One needs to keep an active starter on hand to be so ready for action.
Fortunately, we really like sour flavors in this family – sourdough, grapefruit, raspberries, passionfruit (when we can get them), cranberries even. So why not make sourdough oatmeal pancakes? The oats in this recipe actually go a ways to mellow out the sourness. Instead of sour, you get a bit of sweetness, some chew, a crisp crust, and a more complex flavor.
The other benefit of doing this as a sourdough pancake is that you’re not only relying on baking soda / baking powder as a leavener. You’ve got the wild yeast to help with that! This means that if you leave it in the fridge a bit longer before you use it (for instance, if you prep the pancake batter the evening before your pancake party), you should get slightly more air in your pancakes than if there were no sourdough starter in there.
Whole Wheat Pancakes
You may have noticed that this sourdough oatmeal recipe is whole wheat. That’s because I’m trying to move away from using white flour whenever it’s not totally necessary in a recipe. (Here’s why.) One way to make a whole wheat pancake situation yummy is to add oats – that way you’re striving for heartier / chewier texture. That texture works really well with whole wheat flour as a base.
For Kids
I also have to say that our kids really like these. We even bring them as one of our snacks for long flights when visiting family. They travel really well, they don’t leave behind a lot of crumbs, you can get some fruit in there, and they keep the kids bellies pretty full because of the oats.
The only issue we continue to have is that each kid likes different things mixed into the pancakes, which drives me crazy. Imagine waking up to cheerfully make your kids pancakes, thinking they’ll be delighted! Instead, they arrive to the kitchen and angrily refuse to eat pancakes for three different reasons. One child because there are no raspberries in the pancakes. Another child because there are no bananas in the pancakes. Last child because he’s a tiny little curmudgeon who picked up on the ragey attitudes of his older siblings and refused to eat anything at all.
Perils of Mixins
I’m still working on a fix for this particular issue. If anyone has any ideas, please do let me know.
I have tried making everyone banana pancakes, and then adding the raspberries to just my son’s pancakes – so my daughter gets her banana pancakes, and my son gets a raspberry banana pancake. I thought this was a great fix until he picked up on the fact that there were bananas as well as raspberries in his pancakes. He was horrified by my betrayal.
Plain with raspberries and banana on the side does not work, by the way. It just made everyone mad. The only solution I’ve found is to relent in my standard no-maple-syrup rule and let everyone have a bit of syrup if they just knock off the complaining and eat. I’m not at my best “eat it or leave it” frame of mind first thing in the morning. I was excited about the pancakes, and I wanted them to be too! But I suppose telling them they can just not eat any pancakes at all if they’re going to complain is the only way out of this trap (at least based on the French Kids Eat Everything book). Problem is – if they aren’t going to be excited, I won’t want to make them pancakes. AGHH!
In conclusion, consider keeping your sourdough oatmeal pancakes plain? Or only ever mixing one thing in them? Or just get up at least 1 hour before your kids and actually finish your cup of coffee before the kids get downstairs. Probably the best strategy of all.
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Sourdough Oatmeal Pancakes
These sourdough oatmeal pancakes are made with whole wheat flour, oats, tangy buttermilk, and sourdough starter!
Note on Mixins: You can make these plain (my preferred way). Or you can stir in raspberries, strawberries, or bananas (mash the banana and add 1/2 tsp of cinnamon). All these options are good options.
You’ll see that the ingredients are broken down into “overnight” and “in the morning.” Let me stress that this is ideally when you would do this. You can 100% make the entire batter the night before so that all you need the next morning is to cook the pancakes.
In case you’re curious, the reasoning behind timing out the two parts of the recipe are (1) the yeast from the sourdough starter needs time to eat sugar and make carbon dioxide (helps the batter to rise when you cook it) and lactic and acetic acids (tangy sourdough flavor), but adding some salt to the batter as it sits overnight will slow this process down – yeast doesn’t like salt; (2) as soon as you add the baking soda to the batter, it will start making bubbles, and some of this effect will wear off by morning. So if you mix up the batter the evening before, you’re mixing in the salt and the baking soda about 12 hours before you’re going to cook – this risks slightly less fluffy pancakes. But they will still have some fluff – I know because I actually do this a lot.
- Total Time: 0 hours
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Ingredients
Overnight Mixture (give at least 1 hour to sit)
1/2 cup unfed sourdough starter
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, see my substitutions guide)
1 cup rolled oats
2 tbsp honey
In the Morning . . .
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Mixins
1 1/2 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen) or chopped strawberries is my go to!
Instructions
1. Prep the overnight mixture.
Mix together:
- 1/2 cup unfed sourdough starter
- 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 2 tbsp honey
Allow the mixture to sit for at least 1 hour, ideally 8+ hours. This will give the sourdough time to get feisty and the oats time to plump up from the buttermilk.
As mentioned above, you can absolutely make the entire batter (not just the overnight mixture) the night before! You’ll have slightly less puffy pancakes, but I do this all the time. I even let it sit longer because I’ll typically only cook half of the batter on a given morning and then save the remainder for the next day. It works just fine.
2. Melt the butter.
Melt the butter (1/3 cup) and allow to cool a bit.
3. Finish preparing the batter.
To the overnight mixture, add:
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/3 cup melted butter, slightly cooled (so it doesn’t cook your egg).
If you’re adding fruit (totally optional!), fold in in the 1 1/2 cup of raspberries, strawberries, or bananas.
4. Make some pancakes.
Preheat a pan for at least a minute (2-3 minutes if you’re using a cast iron) over medium heat. You want the pan to be quite hot when you start the pancakes.
Right before you’re about to cook, add some butter to the pan. My favorite way of doing this is to take a stick of butter, peel the paper off one side, and literally smear the butter stick all over the bottom of the pan. That way, you get complete coverage. I always save a stick of butter in our fridge for just this purpose. It works great for eggs too, by the way.
The butter should immediately foam up – then you know the pan is hot enough. If any areas are not foamy, this is a good indication that the pan is not evenly heated – consider readjusting the pan on the stove and waiting a bit longer.
Add a spoonful of batter to the pan. I usually prefer these pancakes on the thinner side, so don’t use a massive scoop. The butter should bubble around the batter – not a ton, but a little. If not, your pan is not hot enough OR you don’t have enough butter in the pan.
Pancakes are ready to flip when little bubbles come to the top of the pancake all over (not just around the edges). Flip, and remember that pancakes always brown faster on the second side. Err on the side of overcooking here, because the oats will prevent the batter from drying out too much, but the raspberries can slow down the cooking (particularly if you added frozen raspberries).
5. Enjoy your yummy pancakes!
Notes
No buttermilk? Check out my swaps/substitutions page.
- Prep Time: overnight
- Cook Time: 10 min
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: stovetop
