If you’ve started a batch of my Authentic Sourdough Just Like Great-Grandma Used to Make, you’re probably making my yummy recipe for Gluten-Free Sourdough Bread that Doesn’t Taste Like Cardboard Rolled in Sand.  Perhaps, though, you’re starting to yearn for other sourdough goodies. 

I’m offering you two today with FREE printables!  (I always aim to please.)

The journey toward a good gluten-free pancake has been a frustrating one.  When I started my clean eating journey, I couldn’t help but think that all those poor dears out there in cyber-land who posted their recipes on the internet for the rest of us were living in a state of such desperate deprivation they no longer knew what a pancake was!  If it held to a disc shape and supported a pat of butter and a drizzle of syrup, they thought they had something.

In the beginning, I ate no grains at all for three months to give my system a total rest.

I started with coconut flour pancakes.  The best coconut flour version I found after much trial and error were made from a recipe by Dr. Bruce Fife in a wonderful book called, “The Coconut-Ketogenic Diet”.  I’ve poured over that book and made many of the recipes and contacted Dr. Fife and received permission to share short quotes and recipes here on the blog.  We’ll save that for another day as we are on the subject of sourdough.  I mean no disrespect to Dr. Fife when I say (while I linger upon this tangent for a few more seconds) that this is a really bad title for a really great book!  It should be called something like, “A Manual for the Human Body and a Bunch of Stuff About Coconuts I Betcha Didn’t Know”.  You’ll learn a lot about yourself even if you never follow his weight loss plan . (I didn’t.) You’ll find it right here on Amazon.

Now, let’s take that sourdough starter and make some real pancakes.  As always, I tinker with recipes until I feel like they are worthy of passing on to you.  This one began with a recipe I found at www.artofgluten-freebaking.com  I’ll be going back to that site for more ideas now that these pancakes are such a hit with Smuffy.  He says they’re the best pancakes I’ve ever made for him.  The original recipe made lots more pancakes, so feel free to double my recipe if you have a large family.  I changed a few other things as well as using the Gluten-Free Flour Blend I shared here on the blog.

Another aggravating situation one finds oneself in when walking away from most grains is the agony of the unfulfilled pizza craving.  Yes, I know all those people out there are mushing cauliflower together and calling it pizza crust, but sometimes you just want real pizza – pizza you can pick up in your hands and bite into its crispy crust instead of forking it.

Again, I found a recipe and started tweaking.  This great version of Gluten-free Sourdough Pizza Dough, originally given by Emily at www.fermentingforfoodies.com got me off to a great start.  With a few changes to align it with my commitment to clean eating, I’m really pleased to be enjoying pizza again.

Pizza and Pancakes – isn’t life grand?  Let’s get that sourdough out of the refrigerator and let it poof up on the counter for a couple of hours and get started!

Gluten-free Sourdough Pancakes or Waffles

Ingredients:

1 cup Authentic Rye Sourdough Starter

¾ to 1 cup milk (depending on how thick/thin you like your pancakes)

1 cup Gluten-free Flour Blend, divided

½ teaspoon Celtic sea salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon non-aluminum baking powder

1 tablespoon raw honey

1 tablespoon refined coconut oil, melted and cooled

1 extra-large egg, beaten

Instructions:

1.  The night before (or at least 2 hours before) make a “sponge” by mixing the sourdough starter, ¾ cup milk and half the flour in a large bowl, stirring until combined.  The mixture may have lumps and that’s fine.
2. When you are ready to make pancakes or waffles, preheat the griddle to medium-high or heat the iron.
3. Mix the remaining flour, salt, soda, and baking powder together in a bowl and stir.  Add to the sponge, along with the remaining ingredients and stir until well blended, adding more milk if needed.
4. For pancakes, oil the surface of the griddle with coconut oil and pour 1/3 cup portions of batter onto the surface, cooking until edges appear dry and bubbles form over the surface.  Flip and cook for an additional minute.
5. For waffles:  Grease the iron with oil before making each waffle.  Follow your iron’s directions, which likely require a cup of batter and five minutes cooking time for deep pocket waffles. 

YIELD:  8 or 9 pancakes.

I’ve actually not made these up into waffles yet, so I can’t testify as to how they turn out.

Now that we’ve had a fabulous breakfast, let’s move on to pizza!

Gluten-free Sourdough Pizza Dough

Ingredients:

1 cup Authentic Rye Sourdough Starter

1 ½ cups Gluten-free Flour Blend

1 tablespoon refined coconut oil, melted

1 teaspoon raw honey

1 egg

1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt

1 Italian herb blend

Instructions: 

1.  Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.  You want a fairly firm dough, so you may have to add a bit more flour depending on the feel.
2. Allow to rest, covered, in a warm place for 2-4 hours.
3. Divide into two balls and roll out onto parchment paper.  Crusts will be very thin.  If you prefer a thicker crust, you may not want to divide the dough.  If you like thin crust, but don’t want to bake them both at once, wrap one of the dough balls in parchment paper and then in plastic wrap to freeze until needed.  Thaw overnight or for several hours prior to rolling out for baking.
4. Pre-bake the crusts in pre-heated 425° Fahrenheit (or 200° Celsius) oven for ten minutes by placing the parchment directly on the oven racks or on a preheated pizza stone, whichever way gives you the crispness you desire.
5. Remove crusts from the oven and top with your favorite ingredients.  Return the pizza to the oven and take an additional ten minutes or until the cheese is melted and crust is beginning to brown.

When it comes to pizza, Smuffy is in love with the pizza sauce I make it with my homemade tomato paste from the tomatoes in our garden.  Did I mention that Smuffy is the local Tomato King?  At least he was last year!  Take at look at his tomato patch.  It actually got quite a bit bigger than this!

You must know, however, that while tomato paste is as easy as putting the little darlings in the food processor, making a puree and then simmering them on the stove until they are as thick as the paste you buy in the store, there is a down side.  It takes a good long while.  San Marzano paste tomatoes are ideal, as they have little juice and speed things up a bit, but still, you’ll need to do it when you are going to be around the house for a while.  Also, I’ve found that two pounds of tomatoes yields 1 cup of paste – so there’s that to consider.

Once I’ve slathered my pre-baked crust with ½ to ¾ cup of pizza sauce, I love to go crazy with the veggies.  I mound the pizza high with fresh spinach (but only my half as Smuffy doesn’t care for it) and then follow with thin-sliced onions, green pepper, sliced mushrooms, turkey pepperoni and six ounces of shredded mozzarella. 

We prefer turkey pepperoni as it tastes the same to us, yet doesn’t leave a giant grease puddle under each slice.  Use anything you like.  Here’s one I made with chicken.

If you’ve been looking for gluten-free options for pancakes and pizza, I think your family will really like these recipes.  Please comment and let me know!  Happy cooking!

Now it’s time to get those FREE PRINTABLE RECIPES HERE.

Soon I’ll be sharing a faux-carb pizza dough along with my recipe for home-made pizza sauce with no sugar or artificial sweeteners. (Try to find that in the stores!)

What’s all the fuss about eating healthy?  We shouldn’t just survive, we should thrive!  Check out my Thrive! page. 

There’s still that Smuffy story brewing and I think Phoebe June has some thoughts on spring she’d like to share, so stay with us!

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