Here's my response to the comment @blethenstrom made about sourdough pancakes:
I grew up on sourdough pancakes. My father called them "flapjacks." In fact, sourdough flapjacks were pretty much the only thing we had made with sourdough. Every Saturday morning it was flapjacks. When I was a young kid Dad would cook them at the table in a square aluminum electric skillet. He used an old syrup jug to pour in the batter, and the silly return spring on the thumb-operated gate would always fall off somehow. Then he'd warn us to be careful chewing until somebody spit out the spring.
After I got a little older Mom got a new stove that had a griddle attachment and our weekly flapjacks moved over there. We also changed to an old aluminum stovetop percolator pot to put the batter in. About that time I was encouraged to cook my own.
My mother was a microbiologist with a specialty in dairy microbiology and fermentation. She always made her sourdough cultures with milk instead of water. Took me a long time to get my head unwound from that; I now use water exclusively. But it was good. My parents used to say without a trace of humour that sourdough flapjacks were the thing that kept their marriage together for a while when things got tough. They did it with a strict division of labour. Mom would get the starter out the night before, refresh it and put it in the oven with the light on. Next morning Dad would take out some for next week and then make the batter. They both had to be in on it or nobody got flapjacks.
As a scientist Mom believed that if you did the same thing the same way in the same conditions every time, it would always turn out the exact same way. This was her gold standard. Because Saccharomyces exiguus goes kinda slow sometimes she hated sourdough baking. She was a working mother and time was precious, so a make that didn't rise on her schedule was not going to work out. But still, she liked sourdough. The most she'd do was occasionally she'd stir some sourdough culture into a batch of Bisquick biscuits. It worked; we ate them.
Just the other day I was browsing on Nairn's Oatcakes website. They seem to have a bit of confusion about flapjacks. Generalizing on one sample is not good science, but apparently in Scotland a "flapjack" is baked in a pan like brownies. Another case of two countries separated by a common language, I suspect.
O.H.
I grew up on sourdough pancakes. My father called them "flapjacks." In fact, sourdough flapjacks were pretty much the only thing we had made with sourdough. Every Saturday morning it was flapjacks. When I was a young kid Dad would cook them at the table in a square aluminum electric skillet. He used an old syrup jug to pour in the batter, and the silly return spring on the thumb-operated gate would always fall off somehow. Then he'd warn us to be careful chewing until somebody spit out the spring.
After I got a little older Mom got a new stove that had a griddle attachment and our weekly flapjacks moved over there. We also changed to an old aluminum stovetop percolator pot to put the batter in. About that time I was encouraged to cook my own.
My mother was a microbiologist with a specialty in dairy microbiology and fermentation. She always made her sourdough cultures with milk instead of water. Took me a long time to get my head unwound from that; I now use water exclusively. But it was good. My parents used to say without a trace of humour that sourdough flapjacks were the thing that kept their marriage together for a while when things got tough. They did it with a strict division of labour. Mom would get the starter out the night before, refresh it and put it in the oven with the light on. Next morning Dad would take out some for next week and then make the batter. They both had to be in on it or nobody got flapjacks.
As a scientist Mom believed that if you did the same thing the same way in the same conditions every time, it would always turn out the exact same way. This was her gold standard. Because Saccharomyces exiguus goes kinda slow sometimes she hated sourdough baking. She was a working mother and time was precious, so a make that didn't rise on her schedule was not going to work out. But still, she liked sourdough. The most she'd do was occasionally she'd stir some sourdough culture into a batch of Bisquick biscuits. It worked; we ate them.
Just the other day I was browsing on Nairn's Oatcakes website. They seem to have a bit of confusion about flapjacks. Generalizing on one sample is not good science, but apparently in Scotland a "flapjack" is baked in a pan like brownies. Another case of two countries separated by a common language, I suspect.
O.H.
