Saturday, March 12, 2011

Crumpetty Pancakes

Five quarts of sour milk? When Maggie was sick and banned from milk, we ended up with a lot that soured before we drank it. (That showed us who's our milk-guzzler!) Raw milk doesn't go rancid when it sours as does pasteurized milk. Still, five quarts will make a LOT of pancakes and muffins.

When I finally was ready to use the last of the milk (five weeks after it had gone sour), I was in a hurry to throw some pancakes onto plates before we left for morning chapel. I didn't want to spend the time to combine the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl. I took a shortcut. I added the baking soda, sugar, baking powder, and salt directly to the milk/egg/oil mixture. After beating that together well, I began to measure the flour. Oh my goodness -- in that brief amount of time, the chemical reaction between the baking soda and the sour milk caused the whole thing to grow and foam and expand. (It was pretty cool!) I stirred in the flour and began to fry the pancakes, wondering how badly I might have ruined them.

But they weren't ruined. They had this wonderful texture that made us think of crumpets, kind of light and spongy with some crispness on the outside. I might try this again ... on purpose this time!

4 comments:

  1. cool! I may have to try that too.

    I've been cooking more than usual lately, which always happens after a trip to Kenya. The food there is fine. really. But oh my, does it ever make me appreciate the variety we have. Every day we can have something different!

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  2. I think of how tired we get of having the same leftovers for only 3-4 days in a row. And I think my family is more patient with leftovers than many Americans. We're sure spoiled with the variety!

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  3. You can put the sour (raw) milk in pancakes? Can you drink it without getting sick and it just tastes gross, or what? Is raw milk straight out of the utters and into bottles?

    So many questions. I suppose I could just google it and get the information for myself, but it's less effort to just wait for your response. Lol.

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  4. Yes, Meghan, I put sour milk in pancakes. Yes, you can drink it without getting sick. It's actually good for you. But I don't like the sour taste. That's why --if it sours-- I'm going to bake with it rather than drink it.

    Raw milk is what came from the cow. It's not pasteurized. It's not homogenized. I don't get mine straight from the udder; I get mine out of the milk tank before the tanker picks the milk up to transport it to the dairy.

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