New Zealand Rye Pancakes

This is my favorite pan. It’s way too small for much of what I need a pan to do, but it’s lovely and reliable. This is one of my 19th-century cast iron pieces, and my grief will be everlasting if something amiss should happen to it!

Pancakes are definitely a favorite in my house, and I often make them with various sourdoughs so I can avoid wasting discard (on those occasions I feel like discarding). I hadn’t played with rye pancakes before, but I am a great lover of rye and was excited about these! While Child Tester thought these were disgusting, the adults in the house were clamouring for more! These are also really easy to make, and you can scale them up if you’re feeding many people. This recipe fed two adults and one child, none of whom were crazy hungry. This was eaten with bacon and fruit, so it constituted about 50% of the meal’s total volume. You will want to scale this up in instances where you’re feeding more than just a few mouths.

I’m totally in love with these, and am now at the point where I’m freezing them so I can batch freeze and serve each person what they want without making more than one type of pancake at a time (she really hates these, y’all, so I’m no longer sure how much we can trust her opinions). To freeze, put the pancakes on a plate or baking sheet or whatever, and put in the freezer. After an hour or two, move them over to a freezer-safe bag or container to store. Heat these up the same way you would heat store-bought pancakes or waffles. I don’t have a toaster, so I use the microwave due to not wanting to watch the broiler or dirty a pan.

Here’s what you’ll need

1 egg

80g (2.4oz) buttermilk, yogurt, or milk*

50 grams of rye starter (1.8 ounces)

1/2 teaspoon salt

75g rye flour

1 tablespoon melted butter

Here’s what you do!

Mix together the eggs, milk, sourdough starter, and salt. Then add the rye flour, followed by the butter. I think this is better if you tuck the batter in the fridge overnight (I tested it), but these are also fine without the overnight fridge rise if pre-planning is about as much your thing as it is mine! Once this are mixed, make them per normal pancakes.

*NOTE: you can use way more dairy in here, and also can use water. I wanted this pancake batter to be thicker than with wheat, because rye isn’t great a giving good rise, and the recipe reflects this. If, when you’ve mixed it all up, you find you’re prefer a thinner batter, simply add more of whatever fluid you used until it’s the consistency you prefer. I think you could go up to doubling the yogurt I used before it’d become a problem. Normally I’d use about 1.5x the amount I call for here (so about 120g) if I were making these with wheat.