Buckwheat Pancakes And Olive & Rosemary Sourdough

I've been making sourdough bread (and pancakes) for about 6 months.  My starter seems to be happily living in my fridge and I've even managed to find a decent flour that lets me make whole wheat sourdough bread.  This weekend I goofed and ended up with a starter surplus.  Since I don't have too many friends interested in taking the excess starter off my hands I elected to try some new recipes with the extra starter.

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First up was buckwheat blueberry pancakes:

• 2 cups of starter
• 1 cup of unbleached hard wheat flour
• 1 cup of  buckwheat flour
• 1/2 cup of fresh or thawed blueberries
• 2 tablespoons of white sugar
• 1 teaspoon of gluten
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water

I mixed all the ingredients leaving out only the baking soda and water and let the mixture sit for about 20 to 30 minutes.  My starter is fairly active so I don't need to mix the ingredients up the night before.  I then preheated the griddle (between medium and medium low) added the and proceeded to make pancakes.  One soup ladle of batter produced a nominal 3" diameter by 1" high pancake.  Serve with maple syrup and butter. 

Two comments, the gluten is really only required if your starter is a bit past it's prime.  My experience has shown that if the starter is quite stiff then the gluten isn't required but if it has begun to move to a more liquid consistency that the gluten helps to achieve those light fluffy pancakes that I like.  Secondly, buckwheat flour has no gluten so when making buckwheat pancakes or buckwheat bread add buckwheat flour rather than substituting buckwheat flour for wheat flour in a recipe.

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Olive and Rosemary Sourdough

Pan Chancho's Olive and Rosemary sourdough is the reason I started experimenting with sourdough bread and I finally decided to take the plunge and try to replicate their bread.  Since I own a copy of the  Pan Chancho Cookbook I used the Olive and Rosemary recipe, so I'm not going to repeat the recipe here.  I do recommend the cookbook though for those who really love cooking and have an eclectic cooking repertoire.

I modified the recipe slightly to suit the condition and nature of my sourdough starter, I added a small amount of gluten and varied the proofing time.  After the loaf had cooled I tried a small sample.  I would have to say that I actually produced a loaf that was superior to any I'd purchased at Pan Chancho.  However, one day later the bread is pretty much the same as the store bought bread.  I guess there is nothing like fresh bread.

The recipe can stand a few variations or improvements, for example,  I plan on increasing the rosemary in the recipe since I feel that the rosemary is overpowered by the Kalamata olives. I'm also considering a Parmesan, garlic & rosemary sourdough.