I love pancakes. I would eat them every day if I could. Not that I can’t, technically speaking, but I know I shouldn’t, so I don’t. Since going vegan, I’ve just gotten used to my pancakes being a little bit denser than the traditional ones with eggs, and I can live with that. But I was not ready for what was in store the first time I made vegan and gluten free pancakes.
My wife wanted to try the gluten free pancake mix from a certain flour manufacturer. A couple of substitutions and they could be vegan. Easy, right? Except they were bordering on inedible. Hard to cook all the way through, super thick and not the most flavorful. They looked more like biscuits. Even with making some changes to the amount of wet ingredients, they still were not very good. Nice try, but better luck next time, jaunty cap wearing Robert with the mill that is red.
So I wanted to make a gluten free pancake recipe that actually resembled pancakes. What I ended up with exceeded my expectations. I think I might actually like these more than the vegan pancake recipe I usually do at home with regular flour. There are two things you need to understand about the ingredients. First, these do use a lot of baking powder. It’s not a typo. To make up for the lack of eggs, which help provide some lift and fluffiness (technical term) in regular pancakes, vegan pancakes have to use more baking powder to get that fluffiness. The other thing is that they have a higher than usual amount of a binder in them. Again, eggs also help pancake batter come together, so you need to make up for that and the lack of gluten to get these to come together.
If you use psyllium husk flakes (my favorite binder in gluten free baking), these come out thinner and floppy, more like normal pancakes. I didn’t believe it at first, as I’m used to my vegan pancakes being dense and fairly rigid. If you prefer that style, substitute 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum for the 1 tsp of psyllium husk. I’m sure you could reduce the xanthan a little bit to get them thinner and flexible, but by the time I got the recipe to where I liked it, I was on my third half sized batch of pancakes and had to call it quits. So I can neither confirm nor deny that I ate the majority of 12 pancakes on my own.
The only note on cooking these is that they actually do cook like traditional pancakes. Meaning, the batter is thin, spreads out a bit on the hot pan, then starts to set up and cook. You will pretty quickly see bubbles forming on the top.
Once you start to see the bubbles pop and holes start forming across the surface and the edges start to set up, then it’s ready to flip. If you have the heat set just right, the first side will be nicely browned, but not burnt. If it’s a little too dark when you flip it, turn the heat down just a bit.
If your pan is hot enough but not too hot, these get a nice golden color.
So there you have it. Vegan and gluten free pancakes that you might not even realize are either. Let’s go to an interior shot!
Gluten Free Pancakes
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
- 1/2 cup sorghum flour 68 grams
- 1/4 cup white rice flour 40 grams
- 1/4 cup tapioca starch 30 grams
- 1 tsp psyllium husk flakes
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
Wet Ingredients
- 1 cup “milk”
- 3 tbsp oil
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Measure out all dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl and whisk together.
- Measure out all wet ingredients together and whisk together.
- Add wet ingredients to dry. Whisk together thoroughly (until no lumps or dry spots remain).
- Oil and heat up pan over medium heat. Pan is ready when a few droplets of water dripped on the pan “dance” around on the surface. If they just sit there, the pan is not hot enough yet. If they instantly boil off and evaporate, your pan is too hot.
- Pour batter onto pan in desired size (approximately 1/4 cup of batter will give you a pancake 5-6″ in diameter). When holes start to form across the surface and the edges just start to set up, it is ready to flip. Carefully flip and cook for 1-2 minutes more, checking for desired color.
