Breakfast for Dinner, and making my own pancake mix

One of the “convenience” foods I’ve depended on for years, sort of ridiculously, has been that boxed “baking mix”–Bisquick or whatever store-brand equivalent I happen to be using at the time–for making family pancakes and waffles.  At some point it occurred to me that this wasn’t really all that convenient, and that I had really no idea what “multigrain” meant in the mind of the manufacturer…

So I combed the internet (which was obliging as usual) for a recipe to make my own, and as usual came up with something that didn’t quite match what anyone else had but was fairly close to all of them.  This recipe was sort of the template, although this one looks possibly nicer, but either way I shifted things around a bit:

Homemade Baking Mix

Mix in a big bowl or ziploc bag:

• 1/3 cup sugar (or less)
• 5 cups flour (mixture of white and wheat; I did 2 cups whole wheat and 3 cups white flour. A mixture of white, wheat, and oat would probably be nice too.
• 2 1/2 tbs baking powder
• 1/2 tbs salt
• 3/4 cup powdered milk  or buttermilk (this could probably be left out, but then you’d want to use milk instead of water in any recipe you make. Of course, you could do that anyway…)

(makes about 6 cups mix)

To make about a dozen pancakes, you blend 2 cups of the mix, 1 egg, 1 1/2 cups water or milk, and about 3 tbs melted butter (or other oil…the butter is just so yummy…) and off you go. I think this same blend would also work for waffles, but I haven’t tried it yet.

This made very nice pancakes–they weren’t as light and fluffy as they could have been, and I wonder if adding a little baking soda might help that–though honestly I didn’t miss it much.  They had just the right amount of sweetness even without syrup (which I don’t use), and the whole wheat flavor did not overpower the way it sometimes does in pancakes.

My son gave these a vote of “100% success.”  That’s rare in my house.

peace,

J