About a month ago my boss - Beth Buchanan brought me a great treat - she brought a few of us at work these special treats and it is with great delight that I am using it today to make breakfast for the gang of boys who are here for the holiday break to help us get through! And they want to fish too!
The special treat is sourdough starter! Not just any sourdough starter - this starter was given to her Husbands mother in 1969 by the Commanding Officer's wife on the base that they lived on. The starter came to her in 1964 - a wonderful gift from the past. Prior to 1964 we dont know where it came from. Pretty amazing!
With Sourdough you have to plan ahead as you have to start the starter project the night before (or very early in the morning - which doesnt really work for me - Im a night before girl).
The recipe card with the story on the back is so cool - it has the recipe for 11 pancakes all the way to 120 or some such number! Its even laminated which is a bonus round for me - Im a bit of a messy bessy in the kitchen at times! Luckily Im good at cleaning up too!
Here is the night before starter - I opted for the batch that makes 22 pancakes since the fishermen are big eaters! Growing boys you know! The batch starts with 1 C Milk, 1 C flour and 2 Tbsp Starter from the little jar. Mix it up in your bowl and cover it lightly - leave it overnight to work its magic!
Here is the story card (the back of the recipe card) and the little jar of starter.
Above are all the ingredients that you need for a great batch of pancakes! Before you start adding more ingredients though take out of your bowl the amount of starter that you used and replace it in your jar to keep feeding the starter and maintain your batch. This is an extremely important step - otherwise you wont have enough starter.
I think you can read the recipes on the card - Ill include the one I made below.
After yoou remove your starter and replace it in the little jar add 1 Tbsp of butter (I melted mine) 1 egg, 3/4 tsp soda, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 Tbsp sugar. Mix well and fry up on your hot griddle - I put a little bacon grease on mine - butter works well too.
Here is the great story of this batch of starter - The story reads "My mom Gloria received her first jar of this sourdough starter in 1969 in Altus, Ok from the wife of my fathers squadron Commander in the USAF who had gotten hers from a friend in 1964; beyond that I do not know the history. While I was growing up my mom Gloria Buchanan tried to make sourdough pancakes 3 times a week for years until all us kids left home. Once my parents moved to Galena, Ak. my dad made pancakes every Saturday for me and family in creating what is known as "Sourdough Saturday".
Here is a batch of cakes on the griddle. I have a cast iron flat griddle - we call it the "flat iron" and it is what I use mostly to cook bacon, pancakes, and grilled cheese - it has lots of uses though. I used a 1/4 C measuring cup to ladle the cakes on to the iron - I had three boys to feed so 3 at a time worked well for me that day. Once you have them on the hot griddle watch for the air bubbles to form. Once most of them have popped it is time to turn the cake! Then just watch for the edges to start to turn golden on the bottom and they are done!
And here is the finished product! You can make smaller "dollar" pancakes or bigger if you want! Enjoy! I hope you have someone who can share a batch of starter with you and I hope it has as great and special a story as this batch, this gift from the past has!
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