Festival stopover yields twist on breakfast fare

Here is a breakfast recipe for you. It comes from Louise Park of Brewer, who, bless her, showed up to watch me make chowder last weekend at the American Folk Festival. I was so surprised to see so many of you. There must have been at least a dozen and a half regular readers, as well as other festival-goers, who braved the heat and humidity to listen to me gas on about cold-weather food. It was lovely to see you, and now I have your faces in mind as I putter along here.

Louise came prepared with this recipe for High Octane Pancakes, written out on an index card. I took a quick look at it and thought: This sounds good. It has the added virtue of being low-fat, and is endowed with oats and wheat germ, so, as my mother would have said, “it is good for what ails you.”

I make pancakes all the time, and since I have done them so much, I have my recipe in my mind. Rolled oats is one of my favorite add-ins, though I have been known to heave in a couple of tablespoons of cooked rice, or corn, or cornmeal. Those ingredients merely replace an equivalent amount of flour. I routinely use whole wheat pastry flour, as well as an unbleached white. So the oats and wheat germ in this recipe fit right into my usual method.

What makes this recipe different is that there are no eggs. Instead we have plain yogurt and a little oil. It is a nice touch; just don’t expect these pancakes to rise and fluff up like the kind that come out of a box.

Most pancake recipes don’t call for any spice, but a little cinnamon isn’t going to hurt. When I use cornmeal or corn, I often add a little black pepper.

Many thanks to Louise. To the tall gent who told me about blueberries in his lemon meringue, well, here is my e-mail: tastebuds@prexar.com. I can’t wait to see that recipe.

High Octane Pancakes

Yields four large pancakes,

or 9 or 10 four-inch pancakes.

1/3 cup plus one tablespoon all-purpose flour

1/4 cup quick oats

3 tablespoons toasted wheat germ

2 teaspoons sugar

1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup fat free milk

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1 tablespoon canola oil

Combine the first six ingredients (flour through salt) in a mixing bowl. In another bowl, mix together the milk, yogurt and oil, stirring with a fork or whisk to smooth out the yogurt lumps. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry. If the batter seems thin, let it set a few minutes. Bake on a lightly oiled pan, until slightly dry on the edges and bubbly over the surface, flip and cook for another minute or two. Allow these to bake just a little longer than regular pancakes