Wholegrain Pancake Bread (Gluten Free)

My family loves pancakes! But, as many people know, frying breakfast pancakes in sufficient quantities to satisfy hungry tummies can take a very looooong time. One great solution (way better than getting up at the crack of dawn so a steaming pile of warm pancakes is waiting when the everyone else gets up!) is to bake your pancakes in the oven as a traybake. In our house, this dish is known as pancake bread, and I often make a batch of this and use it as a substitute for bread for lunch – my kids even love it topped simply with peanut butter and jam. If you want real pancakes, this batter also works great for that! Feel free to add in whatever you like to the basic recipe – I like to stir in a cup of mixed seeds for extra texture when I use this like slices of bread for open sandwiches.

As usual, the cup measurements below are based on a 250 ml cup as equal to 1 cup. If you don’t need as much as this recipe gives, you can either halve the recipe or freeze the leftover pancake slices for later. I bake this batter in either 2 baking pans measuring 9 x 12 inches or 1 large baking pan measuring about 13 x 16 inches. This makes about 8 to 12 ‘slices’ depending on how big you cut them.

What you need:

4-6 tablespoons of mild oil (I usually use light olive oil or sunflower oil)

4 eggs

1 cup of buckwheat flour

1 cup of sorghum flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder (make sure gluten free)

¼ teaspoon of salt

2 cups of milk (I have used almond milk successfully for a dairy free option before) or 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of water

What to do:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C fan and drizzle 2 -3 tablespoons of oil across each baking pan, if you are using smaller pans, or 4 -5 tablespoons of oil across the baking pan, if you are using a big pan. Place the baking pans (or pan if you are using a large one) in the oven to heat the oil while you mix the batter.

2. Place the eggs, flours, baking powder, salt and milk (and water, if using) in a large bowl and whisk together until well combined. Ideally you should sift the dry ingredients into the bowl, but I usually forget to do that!

3. Once the batter is ready, remove the baking pans from the oven and carefully spread the hot oil across the pans by tilting them until the bottom is completely covered in a layer of oil. It doesn’t matter if there are little pools of oil in parts of the pans once this is done.

4. Once the pans are covered in oil, carefully pour half of the pancake batter into each pan (or all the batter into the pan, if you are using one large one), and then place the pans in the middle of the hot oven for about 15 minutes or until the top of the pancake batter has baked golden brown. If you bake this in one large pan instead of two small pans, I recommend checking the pancake bread after 15 minutes and then adjusting the baking time accordingly.

5. Once baked, remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes before marking out slices and removing each slice from the pan with a turner/spatula.