These pancakes follow the dictates of a traditional whole food diet (like your great-grandmother ate) that includes, whole-fat dairy, real whole eggs, and real butter, because we believe that whole foods are the healthiest food.

I love making homemade pancakes for my family. Pancakes are one of those meals that I can whip up with all those healthy ingredients I have in my kitchen, and does not take much more time than the store bought (mystery about the quality of ingredients) pancake mix. This recipe originally comes from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook, but I have tweaked it quite a bit to make it something my whole family will enjoy. Nourishing Traditions describes their pancakes as “chewy and pleasantly sour”. I am not picky at all about what I eat, so, whole wheat, chewy and sour pancakes are fine with me…but my family hated them.  I started making this pancake recipe four years ago and continued to tweak it until I could produce a light, fluffy pancake made with 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 organic, unbleached white flour. My family asks for these every week…they are a Family Favorite!

Look at this list of healthy, nutritious ingredients…I feel good about feeding these pancakes to my family.

Ingredients:
1 cup organic spelt (or any whole wheat flour)
1 cup organic plain whole yogurt (or buttermilk)
1 cup organic unbleached white flour
2 tsp baking powder (aluminum-free)
1 tsp baking soda (aluminum-free)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk (local and raw preferred)
2 eggs (local, or organic & free-range)
3 – 4 tbsp melted butter (I use Organic Valley Pasture Butter)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp natural sweetener of your choice
Optional Additions – Chocolate Chips, blueberries, peaches, etc

Here are the steps I follow to create Fluffy Whole Grain Pancakes:

1. Nourishing Traditions recommends soaking whole grains overnight to improve digestibility, so, before I go to bed, I mix 1 C whole wheat flour and 1 C yogurt in a large (quart+) measuring bowl (great for pouring pancakes), and place the bowl in a warm place.

2. You can leave your 4T of butter out at room temp overnight, or, in the morning, I put mine in a small glass dish in the toaster oven at 200 degrees to melt.

3. The next morning, I gently stir the soaking flour mixture and then add the remainder of the dry ingredients (white flour, BP, BS, & salt) right on top of the soaked wheat flour and with my teaspoon, quickly mix the BP, BS & salt into the white flour.

4. Next, I dump the remainder of the wet ingredients (milk, eggs, butter, vanilla, natural sweetener) into the large measuring bowl and blend everything together with a wire whisk. Water can be added, 1 Tbsp at a time, until the desired thickness is reached.

5. Melt a pat of butter on a griddle (low temp, but warm enough for water to dance) and pour the batter into 3 – 4 inch circles. I add my options here, right on top of the pancake batter in the pan, rather than into the whole batch of batter. This allows for complete control in the amount of options, and each person gets exactly what they like; chocolate, or berries, or both is yummy, too!

6. Flip the pancakes when bubbles form in the batter in the pan.

This makes about 20 pancakes – leftover batter can also be used for waffles.

Enjoy!