We will get to the recipe in a moment but first, a few thoughts about pancakes, eggs and the conspiracy therein.
Look, I'm no Alton Brown, so I can't go on about the hemoglobular binding of egg protein to flour glutens, which eliminates a certain chewiness while creating a more cake-like consistency - and thus defines why panCAKES must contain eggs.
Instead, I wonder about a world without their inclusion.
And after making a few batches of eggless pancakes, I began to question what they were doing in them all along. Here's what I discovered(*).
In the early 19th century, America was an agrarian economy. Farms were plentiful and most included a coop or 3 of chickens. Before long, there were too many farms and too many chickens laying too many eggs. The country literally began to stink from wasted production around the same time the price of eggs plummeted. Exacerbating this excess was the lack of options for what to do with eggs.
To remedy this situation, the American Egg Marketing Board was formed in 1836. One of the first things it did was to develop a series of new recipes to increase the use of eggs, along with a marketing campaign for improving the image and perceived value of the egg. For the first time in history, Americans were told of "the incredible edible egg". The egg was referred to as "God's perfect breakfast" and "Manna from Hanna" - Hanna being the icon/mascot of the AEMB.
Many recipes in the collection were the standard fare of the time such the Omelet, Sticky Pudding, Cheese Souffle but were amped up to require the use of more eggs. The 2 egg omelet became the 5 egg omelet. Sticky pudding became richer. Souffles became taller. America was well on its way to leading the world in waistline size and arterial congestion.
Other recipes were grabbed from around the world for inclusion. Eggs Benedict came into vogue for the first time in America. (aside: Most people believe that Eggs Benedict was named after Benedict Arnold because of its soft texture and yellow runny middle, but is is now widely believed to have been originated by the Benedictine friars in the mid 15th century.)
The AEMB also created its own recipes, one of which is considered its pièce de résistance: the "Boxer's Breakfast" - a full dozen eggs in a glass with squirts of hot sauce and worsteshire - the precursor of what Rocky Balboa consumed in Rocky I, the movie.
But the Board wished to go beyond the normal range of gathering and inventing. It had to tweak. And so it added eggs to mixed drinks, forever modifying the Pisco sour and the Ramos Gin Fizz. And more to the point, the AEMB added eggs to several long standing recipes for ice cream and yes, pancakes !
Betty Crocker did her part to foster the reliance of eggs by cementing them as standards of Americana, first with the "Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air" in 1924 and then with the publication of her cookbook in 1941. Conspiracists believe that the AEMB was the genesis for the fictitious Betty Crocker, pointing to the fact that the daughter of the first AEMB President was named Betty and that she had a dog named Crockett (after Davy Crockett, of course).
Since then, time and our perception of eggs have changed somewhat. And although we view eggs in a different light today, most of the same recipes exist exactly as they were.
Now on to my recipe, my advocacy for less eggs in the kitchen.
Eggless Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes
1. Start by adding as much flour as you want to a bowl - as much as you plan to eat. The standard pancake recipe calls for 1 cup flour, so I will list the ingredients from that point of reference. However, I used 1/3 cup today for 3 - 7" pancakes, and adjusted everything else accordingly
2. For each cup of flour, add: (Be sure to mix the dry ingredients together before adding any liquids)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbl. sugar
1 Tbl. light tasting oil (like canola, NOT like olive or peanut)
Dash of vanilla extract (only the real stuff, please!)
3. Add enough buttermilk and mix until you have a medium thin batter. Technically, this is about the same amount as the amount of flour that you used, but because this recipe makes a chewier pancake, I tend to make my batter thinner.
4. Add blueberries.
From this point on, make them like you usually do... big, small, silver dollar size, whatever. If you don't have blueberries, add strawberries or bananas. If you are using bananas, add walnuts - and for a real treat, add some chocolate chips too.
NOTE: The brilliance of omitting the egg is more than the caloric and cholesterol savings. It improves the taste of the blueberry by not clouding it. It also opens up a freedom to make only as much as you want. No leftover batter that turns green after 2 days. With the traditional recipe, you had to futz with the egg if you wanted to make less than a full batch - try to divide it or reduce the ingredients but increase the ratio of egg in the batter. Now, when you go eggless, everything becomes infinitely and easily divisible.
OK, maybe "infinitely" is an exageration.
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PS - if this seems too inexact for you, please loosen up. It's hard to screw up a pancake recipe as long as you are close. A little more baking powder, a little less sugar, less salt or oil, more liquids, thicker, thinner - it all works. Conventional wisdom says to not over mix the batter. i.e., leave some lumps. I don't subscribe to that, but you can.
(*) And when I say, "discovered", it should not be taken in the same sense as most people do - to come upon something for the first time, perhaps previously research and written by some expert, and presumably, factual in nature. Instead, I mean it in the way of discovery through vision and invention - what some might call, fanciful fiction. Or maybe not. After all, last night while watching a program on The Discovery Channel, "Through the Wormhole", I mused out loud that perhaps scientists are having trouble unifying theories of forces because GRAVITY is not a FORCE. i.e., that it does not exist in itself but as a result of other things. And then TODAY, I read the same thing in the N.Y. Times. Weird??? Absolutely. Will tomorrow's paper include eggless pancake recipes and information about the AEMB? Quite possibly.
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