Flippin Sourdough Pancakes

Sourdough Pancakes

As a family, we are completely new to sourdough. So when at the start of Lockdown 2020 we decided to create a sourdough starter as part of Miss A’s science project we found ourselves with a problem…what to do with all that ‘discard’.

Fortunately, a friend Caroline, mentioned she was making pancakes and muffins with her discard and so I went looking for a recipe that was quick, tasty and family-friendly.

Baking powder is still like gold dust here in the UK, so the following sourdough pancake recipe contains baking SODA (bicarbonate soda) which is readily available. This recipe has become a family favourite and ‘Vinnie’ (we named our sourdough starter Vinnie Van Dough’) is happily maturing and keeping us in breakfasty goodness for the foreseeable future.

‘We named our sourdough starter Vinnie Van Dough

Sourdough Pancake Recipe (no baking powder)


1   cup sourdough starter

1   cup plain flour

1   teaspoon baking soda

½  teaspoon salt

2   tablespoons melted butter (if using salted omit extra salt)

1   egg

2   tablespoons sugar

¾  cup milk


Turn your burner/hob on and put a pan on to heat up on medium heat. Our burner temp goes up to 6 and I set ours on 4 for cooking sourdough pancakes. Do not add any butter to the pan yet – just let it heat up as you get on with prepping your ingredients.

In a bowl, combine your plain flour, baking soda, sugar and salt.

Add your ‘discard’ sourdough starter, melted butter, milk and the egg
(I like to combine these in a jug and whisk them together before adding them to the dry mix.)

Mix the dry and wet combined ingredients well with a whisk.

You will notice that the mix is ‘rising’ in the bowl, this means you have a really healthy sourdough starter.

Once your pan (I use non-stick) is hot, pop a little knob of butter into the pan and then put ¼ cup of mix into the pan – these make huge ‘diner-style’ pancakes so you can make them smaller if you like, just add less mix..

Cook on the first side until bubbles appear and BREAK on the surface.
I like to leave it until the bubbles have broken and the edge of the pancake shows a slight change in colour before I flip the pancake over. Once it has been flipped, it needs about 45 seconds to 1 minute to cook the other side.

Remove from pan and serve as you like with syrup, Nutella, fruit, lemon & sugar or go all out and make it part of a ‘diner-style’ American pancake stack with bacon.

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