Gluten Free Pancakes with Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour

I've loved pancakes all my life. Who doesn't? We had pancakes often, even for dinner. When the weekly paycheck began to run dry Ma got down the box of Bisquick and not one person whined about it. Sometimes my sister would make a pancake man for me, with a smiling face and eyes. In fact, when I was a child pancakes were the first thing I taught myself to cook. 

I'm gluten free by necessity now and have had so many pancake failures. I've tried vegan scratch GF recipes using coconut flour, almond flour or oats ground in the Vitamix, and they were okay, but usually gritty, unfluffy and "tough." Subbing gluten free flour blends for regular flour in a standard recipe never provides the correct ratio of ingredients for a good outcome, and I haven't cared for other GF pre-mixed pancake brands. My last failure attempting to bake a pumpkin bread subbing GF flour taught me that when searching for a recipe, you must find a dedicated gluten free recipe. I'm not a baker to begin with, and don't have much time for it anyway, so I gave up trying out frustration. 

Until recently when I noticed Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour at the store and bought it on impulse. I trust Bob's Red Mill quality and figured Bob wouldn't do me wrong. One beautiful July morning in Connecticut, with blueberry season in full swing, all the stars aligned and a pancake brunch felt necessary.

This recipe is my adaptation of Fluffy Gluten Free Pancakes, courtesy of the Bob's Red Mill website. It is mostly plant based and easily made vegan by subbing egg substitute for the egg and coconut oil for ghee. I prefer ghee over butter as a cooking medium because of the high smoke point and the fact it does not burn and turn brown.

Fluffy Gluten Free Blueberry Pancakes

• 1-1/3 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup almond milk*
• 1 TBS pure maple syrup**
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries, thawed
• ghee for cooking
• regular butter and maple syrup for topping

 *After mixing the batter I added more almond milk to achieve the right consistency

**Results and flavor will be better with 100% maple syrup

1 - Beat egg; add almond milk, vanilla and syrup.

2 - In a separate bowl mix dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until blended, adding more almond milk until a good consistency for pouring the batter is reached.

3 - Fold in the blueberries.

4 - Melt about 2 TBS ghee in a large skillet. When melted, pour half of the melted ghee into the batter and stir again.

5 - Fold in the blueberries.

6 - Working in batches, cook pancakes on medium-low, flipping when bubbles form on top.

Here is where the ordinary butter comes in - on top of the cooked pancakes! Serve with syrup and enjoy.

This recipe makes eight pancakes.  I'm already planning more pancake brunches. Chocolate chips, cooked chopped apple with brown sugar and cinnamon, and pumpkin spice sound mighty fine!