Serves 3-4, making 6 medium large-sized pancakes.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup stone ground 100% whole wheat flour
- 1/4 cup oat bran
- 1/4 cup freshly ground flaxseed
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup buttermilk (I prefer whole, but low-fat works as well)
- Coconut oil
- Salt, black pepper, turmeric, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves, all to taste (I don’t measure any of these. I use 2 pinches kosher salt, several “cranks” of my pepper mill, a generous amount (probably a teaspoon or so) of turmeric, ground ginger, and cinnamon, about 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg, 2-3 whole allspice, and a pinch of ground cloves.
- Maple syrup (or topping of your choice)
Place a large skillet over medium heat. Put a medium sized metal bowl in the skillet and add some coconut oil (I don’t measure it; probably 1-2 tablespoons). Allow this to melt while assembling rest of ingredients.
If you don’t have a cheap coffee grinder that’s dedicated to grinding spices and flaxseed, then I suggest you get one; I use mine all the time! It’s needed for the next step, which is to grind 1/4 cup whole flaxseed. If you’re using whole spices, they can be added to the grinder at this point, too.
In a mixing bowl, thoroughly combine the wheat flour, oat bran, ground flaxseed, spices, baking powder, and baking soda (I use a wire whisk for this).
Remove the metal bowl with the melted coconut from the skillet, and whisk two whole eggs (I use jumbo) into the oil. Still using the whisk, add the cup of buttermilk.
Pour dry ingredients into the bowl with the egg/buttermilk mixture. Stir and fold gently with a spatula, until well combined. Ground flaxseed can sometimes form clumps when added to liquid, so watch for these, and simply break them up with the spatula.
Add some coconut oil to the skillet (probably about a tablespoon), and spread it around with a cooking spatula, or just pick the skillet up and swirl it around. You will know that your skillet is at the right temperature if the oil is beginning to smoke.
Pour “a pancake amount of” batter into the skillet. If it seems thick, you may need to use the spatula to gently spread it. My skillet is large enough to make 3 medium large-sized pancakes at once, and this recipe makes 6. Smaller ones are easier to handle, so if you’re inexperienced, start with smaller ones.
Cook for a few minutes. Ordinary pancakes will start to show bubbles breaking the surface of the batter when they’re ready to flip, but these are more dense, and usually don’t. Flip them and cook for a few minutes longer. Remove from heat, and place them on a plate in a low-heat oven to keep them warm while you continue making more with the remaining batter, or serve immediately with maple syrup.
*Additional thoughts: the spices are completely up to you. I made these for a long time using equal parts whole wheat flour and oat bran, but then I started learning of the benefits of freshly ground flaxseed, so I split the oat bran into equal parts oat bran and ground flaxseed. More recently, I’ve been reading about the benefits of turmeric, and that’s how it came to be in the recipe. Somewhere else I read that black pepper somehow enhances the benefit of turmeric, so that’s where that came from. Despite the strange combination of spices, these are surprisingly good. I like them, my daughter likes them, and my 8-month old grandson likes them.
Let me know if you try them!