Pancake Recipe Review

The Holy Grail of great gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, almond-free, and corn-free breakfasts must be the Perfect Pancake Recipe. Or so I think, given how many people – including myself – have made attempts at some variation of recipes that incorporate these restrictions.

So, after years of muddling about with less-than-stellar versions, I’m trying a whole bunch of them out, and then constructing my own recipe based on the ideas I do and don’t like from each.

Here are some of the ones I’ve tried:

• Holy Cow Vegan’s Gluten-Free Multigrain Pancakes
• Momable’s Gluten- and Dairy-Free Vegan Pancakes
• The Fitchen’s Perfect Gluten-Free Vegan Pancakes
• Marilyn Gioannini’s Oat Flour Pancakes (from her book, The Complete Food Allergy Cookbook) [Amazon link]

Here are some I looked at and didn’t try, and why:

• Sarah Bakes Gluten-Free Vegan Multigrain Pancakes — not sure of how best to substitute the cornmeal in this one
• Oh She Glows Easy Vegan and Gluten-Free Pancakes — didn’t have buckwheat groats or flour on hand; the preamble all about her sick cat really annoyed me (relevance to pancakes, anyone?); and I have to be very sparing in how much almond milk or banana I eat as they set my nose off on a marathon
• One Ingredient Chef’s Perfect Gluten-Free and Vegan Pancakes — (one ingredient? there are nine…); I have tried pancakes with Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Flour [Amazon link] before, using the recipe right on the bag, and the bean flavour came through so strongly I couldn’t eat them…yuck, yuck, yuck… (although it worked great for a pizza crust I half-invented the other day!). As a result, I’m leery of wasting my time, appetite, and costly ingredients a second time…still, I suppose I should give it one more shot one of these days. Maybe the One — I mean Nine — Ingredient Chef’s recipe will work better than Bob’s own?

Here’s what I think about each one I did try, based on my own cooking efforts:

Holy Cow Vegan’s Gluten-Free Multigrain Pancakes:

• easy recipe to read and understand
• annoying, lengthy precursor all about how she is gaining weight on a vegan diet, commentary that has nothing to do with the actual recipe (put it in a separate blog post, please!)
• they came out very flat, like a crepe
• decent-enough flavour
• didn’t have millet flour so used sorghum flour instead (as per her comments that flours can easily be substituted)

Momable’s Gluten- and Dairy-Free Vegan Pancakes

• decent taste, except too much cinnamon for Jeff’s taste…
• used Sarah Bakes Gluten-Free’s gluten-free flour mix
•  great, fluffy texture
• quite a dark brown colour, instead of a light/white pancake colour (from the cinnamon, maybe?)
• substituted guar gum in for the xanthan gum in order to keep them corn-free
• didn’t make enough, even for only two people

The Fitchen’s Perfect Gluten-Free Vegan Pancakes

• lots of great photos
• oddly enough, even though there’s only a splash of maple syrup in these, Jeff found them to be quite sweet
• I really liked the flavour, and, except for thinking them too sweet, Jeff liked them, too
• they did rise, but were rather firm and solid, instead of fluffy
• used brown rice flour, which I had, instead of white rice flour, which I did not have (maybe that’s what made them firm instead of fluffy?)
• made lots for two people

Marilyn Gioannini’s Oat Flour Pancakes

• made this recipe for years and years — it was the only one I could find, other than a very old rice pancake recipe that called for ingredients that were no longer on the market, back in the early 2000’s when I first dropped wheat, corn, and dairy from my diet — so I have tons of experience with this one
• never turned out fluffy, no matter what I did
• was easier to get better results when I could still use eggs; switching to psyllium seed husk really took what little lift was in them out completely
• like the taste
• rubbery texture

And the winner is…

For me, the showdown comes down to Momable’s and Fitchen’s recipes. I think I’m going to try a blending of the two to see if I can find that elusive nexus between great texture and great taste! When I find the winning mix, I’ll post the recipe.

 PS: I don’t look for vegan recipes because I eat vegan food only, I look for vegan recipes because they will always be egg- and dairy-free.