Sourdough pancakes

So bear with me here as I take you along my journey of making sourdough pancakes. Ha ha! It was quite the task to figure out how to work with this starter yeast that was given to me by my good friend Linda.

The first one or two tries ended up with really mushy and dense pancakes on the inside.  Uncooked pancakes, really:

I was cooking the pancakes on a regular pan and after a while decided to wait longer for all the bubbles to form on the pancake before flipping it.  Maybe it will cook through more:

Nope, still no good.  On top of being dense and uncooked, it was also a bit bland.  So, I decided to add some garlic salt.  Better!  And this time, I swapped to cooking on a different pan:

But now, I had the heat on too high??? This one is definitely burnt!

A few more air pockets but still very dense:

Hmm... Bobby is just rubbing it in now by making me PERFECT Eggy-in-a-baskets:

I also tried to make an orange cake in between all of this - trying to make the cake Vegan and that was a total flop.  So into the trash it went! It was a tense situation in the kitchen. Ha ha!

Okay, by now I think this is attempt #4 or #5... I decided to use the griddle pan instead.  Maybe that will make a difference?

Looking pretty crispy!

We're getting more air pockets!!!  Slowly but surely:

So it seems that it does matter how long you leave the yeast out for to rest.  The first few pancakes that were dense were using dough that I had immediately "fed".  But if I waited a little while after the feeding, the dough would get more airy and hence, more fluffy during pan frying:

I think I got it!  By attempt #7 or #8, we are definitely getting into the swing of things now.  I also moved the griddle to a higher setting/flame on the stove.  The higher heat definitely helped in making the pancakes more airy too:

Woohoo...!!!

I am running out of flour pretty quickly now because I have been feeding the starter quite a bit every day.  Charlie and I are mostly the ones having the pancakes, mostly as an afternoon snack.  I told Bobby to get some more flour in the grocery store but instead, he came back with... cake mix??!

He said there was no flour in the supermarket so this was the next best substitute for flour.  His actual words were "There is flour in it" and proceeded to put it on top of my flour tin.  Uh huh...

There is obviously the word "flour" in the very first line of Ingredients, but I suppose the combination of words that say "Enriched FLOUR Bleached" doesn't quite matter:

What's funnier is that he opened up the box the next day and realized that the "flour" was all mixed in with the chocolate.  These are definitely interesting times sending Bobby to the supermarket because he would come home with all sort of things with brandnames that I have never seen before! Ha ha!

Anyway, back to the pancakes - Bobby bought some scallions and said that this was how he remembered scallions pancakes to taste like.  Success!!!

And this morning, the pancakes were the best one yet!  When I poured the dough onto the pan, the texture was much smoother than all the other batches.  Look at all those air pockets!  

Sure beats the ones that I started making a few days ago.  Look how bad this one looked. Ha ha!

Well, it's been said that sourdough is suppose to be good for you. Good for the gut.  Charlie and I have been having these pancakes almost every day for the last 4 or 5 days now, including all the bad mushy ones.  Ha ha!  So far so good on the belly.  I did have a bad tummy a few days ago but I think it was from bad apple sauce.  That's my theory at least.

And come to find out, some people have had their sourdough starters for years and years. So far, there is no real record but there is an 83-year old woman that has had her starter dough for 122 years!!!  This was based on an online article I found that was dated 2011.  I wonder if that starter dough is still alive.

Charlie did make a comment about how I can pass this starter to him and he can pass it along to his kids.  Awww... what a sweet thought! Well so far, my starter dough has lasted 2 weeks now. So far so good! If I run out of flour to feed it, then I just have to stick it in the fridge where I guess it will "hibernate".  In any case, we have a long way to go to beat 122 years. LOL!!!