Basic pancake recipe

Every weekend I make pancakes for the wife and I.  Making pancakes for me is a break from over-analyzing my recipes.  I've seen a lot of pancake recipes that call for buttermilk, ricotta cheese, and lots of procedural issues (stir, but not too much, allow to sit for x minutes, use a non-plastic bowl, etc).  I want something where I am more or less guaranteed to have the ingredients in the fridge (no buttermilk) and the recipe can be whipped together while I am still groggy with sleep.  Just like brewing beer, do the right things, use good standard ingredients, and relax.  It will come out fine.

The whole wheat and olive oil make them healthy and a bit more substantial than ordinary pancakes.  They are sweet enough that I never add syrup.  I just eat them like cookies, refrigerate the extras, and have them for breakfast during the week.

I used a "seasoned" pan, which means a pan where you have heated oil on, then cooled, poured off the oil, and wiped dry with a paper towel.  This makes the pan naturally non-stick.  I washed the pan off with water when I am done cooking.  Soap will remove the non-stick coat.  Any germs left in the pan will be obliterated the next time the pan is put on the stove.  Acidic food might also remove the non-stick layer, but it is easy to replace.  Permanent non-stick cookware can actually contaminate your food with chemicals and doesn't even work well for cooking.  You can't brown food with a non-stick pan.  Junk them and buy new ones.  My main pan that I use 90% of the time is a $25 hard anodized pan from Cuisinart.  Durable and heats well.

Whole Wheat Pancakes

1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk (I use whole)
2.5 Tbsp olive oil

1) Preheat a pan on medium-high
2) Mix together the dry ingredients
2) Add the milk followed by the other liquid ingredients
3) Stir until mix.  Try to break up the larger lumps, but you don't need to make it homogeneous
4) Fry one tablespoon/pancake or whatever size you want.  Adjust the pan heat so that the pancakes brown, but don't burn.  When they are ready to turn, they should be pretty easy to slip the spatula under and hold their shape.  If they seem too soft, give them another 30 seconds or so.