You should be able to come up with a mix that includes powdered milk (OR powdered buttermilk OR powdered sour cream) and powdered eggs along with freshly-milled flour, but it would definitely need to be used quickly and stored in the freezer (preferably vacuum-sealed). It will be safe to use, but freezing only slows down the nutrients from degrading and the wheat germ oil from going rancid - it doesn't prevent it. It may be something you mix together in a small amount when you have some freshly-milled flour leftover from making another recipe.

I would suggest using OvaEasy whole egg crystals - available in packets that have 12-eggs per packet at Amazon.com, so all you need to add is water to the mixture. OvaEasy egg crystals are also great when you need 1/2 an egg in a recipe. It's also perfectly okay to leave the egg/s out of pancakes. Add some flaxmeal or chia seeds (or chia seed meal) as an egg substitute.

If you can't find a recipe for a mix, perhaps you can convert your favorite pancake recipe and then divide it into single servings. I've seen low-carb recipes that make one pancake, but not using starter and usually using protein powder.

Before going gluten-free I concocted a multi-grain baking mix I called "Good-For-You Baking Mix" (a Bisquick substitute - which included spelt and white whole wheat flour, oatmeal, cornmeal, etc.) and would use it in a sourdough recipe that made 6 small pancakes or 4 small waffles. Unfortunately it's NOT a "just add water" recipe, but perhaps will provide you a new idea.

SOURDOUGH PANCAKES or WAFFLES

1/2 c. active sourdough starter
1/2 c. milk (OR you can also use yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, sour cream or nut milk, or other milk substitute)
1 egg
1 T. fat (I use coconut oil.)
1/2 c. Good-For-You Baking Mix
1/2 t. baking soda

In a small bowl mix the baking mix and soda. In a small glass bowl, or a 2-cup glass measuring cup, mix milk and fat. Heat to take the chill off the ingredients (zap in the microwave for 30-seconds). Add the egg and mix well. Add the starter, mix again. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until batter is blended. Drop onto a preheated griddle, or bake in a waffle iron. This recipes makes 6 small pancakes or 4 small waffles.

Wow! Thanks, Grainlady, I had no idea such a plethora of preserved products existed until I looked for the egg crystals. I remember you mentioning them years ago, but seeing the packages is revelatory. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't have them! They have 96 serving canisters in six packs! I'd buy one or even a dozen of the packets of a dozen eggs you described, but I'm not out on the range with a chuckwagon!

Still, I'm sure the mix I like has done something similar to the eggs, though they might dry the batter to assure good distribution.

I don't mind scratch if I can make the right amount. I could figure out a recipe and just measure out on the day. It's the partial egg thing that I was balking at. I like playing with flour (though in the last day, feeding my starter every eight hours or so, making peazza dough, and two pies, and I've about had it with cleaning the counters and all the gluey bowls and stuff). I hate playing with eggs. I like what eggs do in my baking and I think I'd miss them with flax or chia substitute, but if the egg crystals work just like real eggs, I could deal with that.

Your good for you sourdough pancakes/waffles sounds good. Yes, that's a great guideline for trying sourdough. I've been collecting guide recipes, and I sure trust yours more than many! The pizza adventure I've told you about is the first I've really messed with yeast dough recipes. I usually have just followed them as written. (Whereas I can throw together a cake with no reference and lots of creative ingredients.) The one exception I can think of was a poppy seed yeast cake, based on a coffee can cake from Joy, I sort of winged it over to salvage a whole lot of poppy seeds that didn't work for a recipe. The cake was too heavy, but it made the most wonderful, irreproducible bread pudding, half and half with stale challah.

In scouring my bread books just to make some rolls, I came to the conclusion that the authors want disciples. There is lots of method info (which I've read through before), but not just a plain ol' recipe I can crib proportions off of. :) I finally did find one to start with when I'm sure my starter is stable. And now I have your pancake/waffle recipe to work from too. It's so much easier when the only variable is the intended one. :)

I use this one, but it does have an egg:

Multigrain Pancake Mix
Yields enough for about 4 batches of pancakes
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups pumpernickel flour (whole rye flour)
1 1/2 cups ground oats (simply blend old fashioned rolled oats in the food processor)
1/2 cup ground flax
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup baking powder
2 teaspoons salt

Combine all of the mix ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Whisk well, breaking up any lumps of brown sugar. Transfer to an airtight container.

Multigrain Pancakes
(Makes about 6 large pancakes)
1 1/2 cups of multigrain pancake mix (above)
1 cup milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons oil (or melted butter)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ��" 2 tablespoons butter (for the skillet)

Place the pancake mix in a mixing bowl. Whisk together the milk, egg, oil, and vanilla in a liquid measuring cup. Pour into the pancake mix, and gently stir to combine. The batter may be a bit lumpy. If itâÂÂs too thick, add just a bit more milk.

Preheat a skillet and melt the butter. Cook the pancakes in the skillet for a few minutes on each side, flipping when air bubbles start to appear on the surface of the batter.

I have had acceptable (to me, anyway) results by subbing 1/4 cup of applesauce for the egg, I think the ground flax in the mix helps and the applesauce adds a good flavor note.

Annie

Thanks, Annie. This doesn't quite make the whip up one pancake test, but they sound good! I've made whole wheat pancakes for years, but haven't done multi-grain yet. This is going to be fun. :)

plllog-

I knew there would be a recipe if I looked hard enough:

From "Mix-A-Meal Cookbook" Mixes & Recipes by Deanna Bean & Lorna Shute. The recipes in this book use powdered eggs, powdered shortening or butter, powdered milk/buttermilk, etc. The recipes were designed to be used with home food storage products.

PANCAKES AND WAFFLES MIX
The recipe is for the Mini-Mix and amounts for the larger recipe are in (----).

Combine:
1 c. white or whole wheat flour (8 c.) [Grainlady note: I'm sure you can use a variety of grain flours.]
1-1/2 T. dehydrated shortening [Grainlady note: or dehydrated butter powder] (3/4 c.)
1-1/2 T. powdered milk (3/4 c.)
1-1/2 T. brown or white sugar (3/4 c.)
1 T. dehydrated whole egg (2/3 c.)
1 t. baking powder (1/3 c.)
1/8 t. salt (1 scant T.)

To make six 4-inch pancakes:
1 scant cup of mix
1 c. water

Mix together and let stand a minute. Cook on a hot, oiled griddle.

So for one pancake use a scant 1/4 c. mix and 1/4 c. water.

I usually make up a large batch - ( 5 cups of flour for last nights batch ) of all the dry ingredients, including home ground soft white wheat, then store in the freezer and then use it as needed, it keeps fine. On baking day, I mix some buttermilk and an egg ( sorry I do use the egg) and then add 1 cup of dry mix per cup of buttermilk. I agree there is a problem if you wanted to make 1/2 cup ( or 1 1/2 cup of mix) in getting the egg ratio right, but I just make it in whole cups.

Wow! Grainlady, thanks so much for looking that up. I could do from a scratch recipe, but it saves a lot of trial and error to start from something meant for the ingredients. I'll look at the backpacking store for the eggs and butter in smaller quantities. I'm definitely interested in the OvaEasy. I could have done this a long time ago with old fashioned powdered eggs, but ugh. I remember them and the milk from trail rides as a kid. Ugh. Advances in food technology are a great thing! Your hard boiled version has really sold me that these are actual eggs. :)

Thanks, Barry, for the guidelines. I don't think I'd use it for pancakes, but there are other kinds of things it might be fun to make mixes for now that I'm doing the milling. ;) Now to find freezer space!

pllog, I tend not to be very particular about measuring and such.

I'd take enough of the mix to make a pancake or two, add a drop of oil (or maybe not) enough milk to get a consistency you like. Ignore the egg. Throw in a handful of dried cranberries or pecans or a spoonful of that leftover applesauce or half a banana left from yesterday, if it suits you, whatever. Leftover yogurt would work well too, I think and I don't see any reason you couldn't omit the baking powder and use your starter.

Mix and cook. (shrug) I'm betting it will be fine and will not be filled with the preservatives and chemicals found in most commercial mixes.

Don't discount savory pancakes either, I like them as well. Add some grated carrot or cheese of your choice, or herbs and black pepper, whatever.

My grandmother taught me to cook and she was mostly a dump and stir kind of cook. My Dad used to say she could make a good meal out of nothing at all.

So, what's the harm? Scoop a bit into a bowl, add some milk or whatever and cook it. If it's horrible, give it to the birds or add it to the compost pile. If not, add toppings of your choice and eat it!

Annie

Thanks, Annie, I'll try that! Thanks for the mix-in ideas too. I usually do unadulterated, but while I'm experimenting, I might as well go all out. :) Especially the carrot and black pepper. :) That sounds good! I make dessert cakes that way, and pizzas. Just scrounge around for stuff. People tell me I cook like on Chopped, but I don't! There isn't anything that I must use. Though, I did get guff here years ago for advocating fusion foods. I figure if it tastes good, it goes together no matter where it was born. :)

I have to speak up for Kodiak Cakes, however. They pride themselves on being a frontier style "flapjack" mix, made the old way, and the only chemicals are the baking powder. (Ingredients: 100% whole grain wheat flour, 100% whole grain oat flour, non-fat dry milk, dried honey (honey, wheat starch), leavening (sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate), egg whites, sea salt.) The only thing different from scratch (other than the "dried" part) is the wheat starch, which is a fine baking product. One of the things I've always liked about this mix is that the cakes are very light. I don't care for the kind of greasy pancakes where you pour the melted butter from the griddle into the batter. The only thing imperfect about them is the nutrition lost through age. I always made pancakes from scratch and suffered with the multiples of egg issue before I found this mix about five years ago.

If you are trying to duplicate Kodiac Cakes, I order Honey Powder from Augason Farms (see link below). The wheat starch is probably in the Kodiac Cakes as an anticaking agent, but it's also a thickener. I would use hi-maize resistant starch instead of wheat starch - which is a high-fiber option you can order from King Arthur Flour - I purchase it in 5# bags from Honeyville Grain (http://shop.honeyville.com/hi-maize-resistant-starch.html).

You can order OvaEasy Egg White Crystals or use Just Whites egg white powder, since the mix doesn't use whole powdered eggs.

Have you looked for a Copy-Cat recipe for Kodiak Cakes?

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Augason Farms - Honey Powder

Thanks for all the info, Grainlady. I haven't looked for a copycat recipe for Kodiak Cakes. They're very good, but just one kind of recipe. I actually prefer less sweet, with buttermilk or sour milk (I don't suppose they also make powdered sour milk?), but love that just add water part. :) I'm sure you're right that the starch in the egg was anti-caking, and it makes sense that it would do double duty as a thickener since there's no real fat.

I think with all the information y'all have given me, and the crystalized eggs, I should be able to come up with a scratch alternative. I'm bemused by the upside down world where milk and eggs hold their goodness in powdered form, but wheat doesn't. :) I mean, I know it's the same old world, but definitely a new to me way of looking at it!

JC

plllog-

It's all about the protective bran.... Once the bran is cracked, the germ oil quickly is attacked by oxygen and begins it's journey to becoming rancid and nutrients degrade. Whole wheatberries will store for decades while whole wheat flour begins to degrade within 3 hours of being milled (according to some sources). That's why wheat is the preferred storage product, not flour. Even bleached and unbleached flour only has a 6-12-month shelf-life.

Another reason for storing whole grains/beans/seeds is that you can plant them to make more, and you can sprout them (your little garden-in-a-jar) as a vital source for "fresh", enzyme-rich, food in an emergency situation.

You may like the "twang" of powdered yogurt or powdered sour cream instead of powdered milk in a recipe (or a mixture of them). When you practice home food storage, some of these "odd" ingredients find their way onto your shelves, first on a trial basis, then they are ingredients incorporated into your menus when you've worked with them awhile. In her book, "100-Day Pantry", Jan Jackson uses all kinds of powdered ingredients, and powdered sour cream is one of them that is key to her casserole type meals.

You need to switch your thinking to ingredients they would use in the commercial mix world. I've tried any number of "odd" ingredients over the years for vacuum-sealed meals-in-a-jar and homemade "convenience" foods -- including powdered vinegar, powdered vanilla, cheese powder, powdered peanut butter, Ultra Gel (modified cornstarch), maple syrup powder, powdered honey, Worcestershire powder, powdered dried mushrooms, powdered lemon/lime/orange, and my favorite pantry staple of all times - tomato powder..... Read the fine print on ingredient lists and you'll start to see many of these dried foods being used commercially.

Add to that freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, and you have a whole new world of options...... :-) Check the library for books, as well as on-line sources, intended for home food storage because they are full of homemade mix recipes.

-Grainlady

Thanks for the lowdown. :) I knew, of course, the why's of it regarding the whole wheat. The three hour thing may be true scientifically, but I milled enough flour for the day (to soak for my bread, and to feed the starter a couple of times). My first encounter with rancid flour was four years ago, after my three month kitchen remodel ended up taking more like ten. My canisters are airtight, so when I opened them, I could clearly smell that my flours were rancid.

Milling is fun enough to stick with. :) I got big bags of the wheat I liked for the Pizza. If those prove consistent, I'll get more of this crop. I could measure out kits, but it's really not that hard to do on the fly. I just measure the red and white wheatberries in the same bowl and mill them together. This time, I also milled a scoop of peas and added a little water. I previously tried soaking the wheat alone, but it didn't come out right. It's much better to mix up the whole recipe, inc. ascorbic acid, and let it do it's thing for at least a day in the fridge. The peazza isn't green enough (I have to try all white wheat), but it tastes great!

I made my first home milled soft white wheat pastry the other day, for early peach pies. The butter crust with vinegar added was nice and flaky, though not the kind of long flakes that I'm assuming come from the bigger globule lard.

Do you know anything about duck fat? I have some that needs using up and I thought I might try it in pastry.

I get it about being able to plant the wheat. Opposite of when they ate their seed stores in the Little House books, because they ran out of food during the winter. :) It's just kind of remarkable that eggs and milk--the freshest things which are always kept cold--are so much more stable as powder than wheat. :)

If I can find small quantities, I might try some other of your powders. As it is, I use It's Delish (a kosher brand--very pure and inexpensive) dehydrated onions and mixed veg in wet quickies like omelettes and meatballs. They absorb the juices and add flavor when one doesn't want to spend an extra twenty minutes chopping and sweating little chips of veg.

So my honey has gone all crystalized. I zapped it enough to liquify enough for my bread, but it's mostly still a chunk. Is that something I can turn into a powder? Don't know that I would do it, but it would be interesting to know how.. For the mixes. ;)

1. Pastry is a mixture of tenderness and flakiness. Mix half of the cold fat with the flour until it is well incorporated. Mix the other half of the fat until there are some larger blobs of it remaining in the mixture. The first addition of flour coats the flour so water doesn't penetrate it and it doesn't develop the gluten - resulting in tenderness. The larger blobs of fat will be reduced to steam as the pastry bakes. The steam will raise the layers of the pastry to form the flakiness you desire.

2. We raised ducks and geese when I was a kid. Nothing better than potatoes and eggs fried in the rendered fat. Use it in any vegetables you are roasting, grease your casserole dishes with it, add it to fried cabbage, when roasting chickens - coat the skin in it.

3. Gently warm your jar of honey in a pan of hot water on low heat. Microwaving it just isn't going to work as well. Honey is another home storage food with a nearly indefinite storage life.

4. I've made "convenience" mixes since the late 70's as a way to save money and time when I had children still at home. Since going gluten-free, it's a whole new world.

5. I use a lot of dehydrated onions. In fact, I use a lot of different dehydrated (homemade and commercial) and freeze-dried foods.

-Grainlady

Yeah, Grainlady, that's the basic way I've always made my pastry. As I said, my butter pastry came out well. I tried one with the cold pressed palm shortening, and it was a mess that melted before it was fully rolled. It had the same chemical taste as Crisco. They tout it for pies, but it was very sticky. It went from chilled disk to sticky moosh that was sort of like warm cookie dough before it was half rolled. I had to finish the pie, so I kind of just squished it into place, and it did become more pie like in the oven, but it's not something I'm trying again. I was looking for a better parve (non-dairy, non-meat) pie than Crisco. No dice.

Since you've been posting all these articles about why it's not so bad using animal fats, and since I can't serve butter pastry at a meat meal, I was contemplating trying duck fat (i.e, kosher lard) since I have some to use up. :) But you said what makes the lard so good is the size of the fat globules, and I wondered if duck fat would even work, or if it would liquify and run away. I'm hesitant to just experiment because it's too hot to bake (I won't turn on the ovens if the a/c is on--we keep the temperature high so if the a/c is on, it's really hot out). So I only have the late evenings for the oven.

Agreed that the bain marie will do a better job on the crystalized honey. I zapped it because I wanted to make the recipe without liquifying a whole quart of honey (the recipe turned out lousy, but that's another story). I asked about drying it because we talked about the dried honey in the Kodiak Cakes and I thought that would be great to be able to use if I could dry at home. Otherwise, it can sit, crystalized, in its lidded bowl (the carton died), until I need it.

I'm not sure what the size of the fat crystal is for goose fat compared to other fats, but that might be an interesting study sometime.

I assumed the honey was spray dried much like powdered milk or tomato powder, and that seems to be right. You'll find more information at the link below.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Honey Powder

Cool! Thanks for finding out, Grainlady! Drying honey is definitely not a home project. :)

JC