Buttermilk pancakes

This is for my friend H*, who has never cooked pancakes from scratch. With a little practice these really are just as easy as the mix, and the light fluffy tender pancakes are well worth it.

I used to make this recipe with a buttermilk substitute (such as soured milk - milk+lemon juice) and it works just fine, but nothing is quite as good as the real thing. Pick up a small carton of buttermilk and keep it on hand - you won't regret it. There is modifications you can do to the baking soda/baking powder ratios in order to use regular milk, but I consider the final product quite blah when I do that and no one has time for blah food right?

These are the pancakes I serve at least once a week to my husband for a quick pre-work (and pre-dawn) breakfast.

Quick note: I've also been known to make a savory version - sprinkling cheddar cheese and rosemary on the uncooked top before flipping. Pancakes are usually served sweet in my region, but with a little creativity, herbs, and aromatics, and maybe a scoop of plain yogurt on the side, these don't have to be yet another sugar-ladened breakfast food. 

Buttermilk Pancakes
-barely adapted from Better Homes and Garden cookbook.

What you need

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 c. Buttermilk - I have successfully replaced it with half regular milk and not modified anything else and had the pancakes come out almost indistinguishable from full-buttermilk. 
• 2 tablespoons oil or melted butter (ie, some sort of fat in liquid form). I usually use olive oil.
• 1 tablespoon of something sweet - I prefer honey or maple syrup. The original recipe called for plain white sugar. 

How to git 'er done

Mix the dry ingredients. If you are using sugar instead of a liquid sweetener, mix it at this step. 

Add the wet ingredients. The original recipe called for the egg to be beaten prior to adding. I'm lazy and hate doing extra dishes. I add the (unbeaten) egg in with all the wet stuff and then sorta poke it with a fork a couple of times before mixing the wet and dry ingredients together. 

Mix everything together until just moistened and mixed - there should be lumps. 

If it's too thick add buttermilk until you have the consistency you want. It *will* be thicker than the mixes in my experience. It's ok!!!!!  My batter sorta gloups out of the bowl into the skillet. 

Heat a skillet on medium high heat. I use a cast iron skillet and find myself turning it down as I go along because it retains heat - you don't want to burn the outside of the griddle cake before the middle is done. 

A trick I learned as a kid to tell when it's ready to flip is to watch the bubbles form on the surface of the raw top. *About half the bubbles should pop and stay sorta dry and open, and the edge of the pancake should look dry. If your pancake is getting too dark on the first side before this happens and it's flipped, turn the heat down. 

*I find that this buttermilk recipe doesn't form as many bubbles as a regular mix (too thick?), so I tend to use how the edge of the griddle cake looks, and just keep an eye on the bubbles without using them as an indicator quite as much. 

Original recipe said it yielded 8 pancakes. LMOA. More like 5-6 medium sized, perfectly reasonably sized pancakes.