Monday Q&A | Milk, Protein, Wheat Grinding, and Homemade Pancake Mix
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
Could you share with me how many gallons of milk your family goes through each week? And also, do you feel like you all get a fair amount of protein each day? I'm wondering if we are having meat overkill over here at my house....
Thanks so much!
-Chris
As a rule, we go through about a gallon each week...sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on how much we have cereal for breakfast and how much use milk in my cooking/baking.
I know a lot of families go through way more milk than that, and I don't necessarily think that's bad. It's just that we don't really drink milk as a beverage (we drink almost nothing but water), so our milk needs aren't very high.
I haven't really tracked how much protein each of us eats every day, but I think we're doing fine. Most of the health information I've read typically says that most Americans get more than enough protein every day and not enough fruits and vegetables. So, I think a whole lot harder about getting more produce into our diet than about getting more protein into our diets.
Of course, you don't have to eat meat to get protein...you can get it from eggs, dairy products, and non-animal sources such as beans and nuts. I don't know what your diet looks like, but odds are good that you could safely consume less meat and still get enough protein.
My question (which you might have answered already), is how do you grind your wheat into flour and where do you buy it?
-Stacy
I did actually answer this on my FAQ page, but since I get this question so regularly, I thought it might be good to include it in today's Q&A! Just as a reminder, the answers to the most commonly asked questions are all over there, so you all might want to take a peek...maybe there's an answer to something you've been wondering about for a while. 🙂
Here's what's on my FAQ page:
How and why do you grind your own wheat?
I use a Whisper Mill, which makes wheat grinding as simple as turning a switch. Whisper Mill is no longer in business, but the Wonder Mill Grain Grinder
, which is almost exactly the same, is now available.
I buy my wheat in 50 pound bags from Quail Cove Farms.
I grind my wheat flour not because it's necessarily cheaper (I should do some calculations to figure that out!), but because the flour is fresher than the stuff you can buy at the store.
I've been following your blog for a couple weeks and have a question. Is there a way to pre-mix your dry ingredients and store them and just add wet ingredients when you're ready to bake? I make pancakes every weekend and have been using a mix 🙁 but would like to know what I'm feeding the family. You've also inspired me to try breadmaking this weekend!
-Becky
Yep, you could do that! I'm not sure about how to modify my buttermilk pancake recipe to make a big batch of mix, but you could make something like 5 times the recipe and store the mix in plastic bags.
For instance, you could get five bags out, and measure out the dry ingredients for the recipe into each bag (each bag would get a cup of flour, a tablespoon of sugar, and so on).
Then on the day you wanted to make the pancakes, you would just need to mix up the buttermilk, egg, and oil, and add that to the dry ingredients.
You can also search the internet for homemade pancake mixes, but the difficulty with most of those is that they call for shortening (like Crisco), which I prefer not to use.
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I don't keep liquid buttermilk on hand because it would end up going bad. Could I substitute the powdered kind in the pancake mix and just add water when I want to make the pancakes?
Yes, that would be a perfect solution for you!
When I have a recipe using buttermilk, I substitute milk and vinegar. My pancake recipe calls for a cup of buttermilk, so I put 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon vinegar into a measuring cup, and then fill it up to the 1 cup mark with milk. I let it sit a little bit before I add it to the other ingredients. Seems to work!
I do pancake mix bagged up just like that. I write on the bag what I need as far as the wet ingredients and I am good to go. Works out fantastically for us.
Could you use this recipe for making other things that you use bisquick for? Such as making biscuits? Or should you use it just for pancakes? (I'd really like to get rid of all store bought mixes)
What does buttermilk do for the pancakes that regular milk doesn't? I've never used buttermilk in anything so I have no clue what the purpose of it is. lol
Oh and about how many pancakes does this make?
Buttermilk adds a nice tangy flavor, and it's thicker than milk, so the pancakes are more fluffy than flat. I think it makes a big difference, but if you're happy with the milk pancakes, you shouldn't feel obligated to try buttermilk! 😉
Buttermilk and baking soda/baking powder can also combine to make the "lift" in baked goods without yeast, like Irish soda bread.
It makes some fantastically, fat, fluffy pancakes. Yum!
Baking soda, needs an acidic ingredient to activate it to give rise - these include buttermilk, lemon juice, vinegar, molasses, and cream of tartar.
Baking powder is combination of a dry acid and a dry alkaline (typically baking soda and cream of tartar), so all that is needed for it to give rise is a liquid. Double-acting baking powder gives 2 rises: one when it gets wet, another when it gets hot.
Fantastic Q and A. Always love reading what you come up with.
I definitely agree about the fruits & vegs over protein. Even as a vegetarian, I find I eat way more protein in a day than fruits & veggies (and I like to tell myself it's ok since I'm trying to gain weight lol). I love the pre-mixing idea as well! We make easy peasy vegan pancakes (easiest pancakes EVER), and I'm going to try making a big mix up! Great answers!
Pancake mix needs an oil, so we usually use butter rather than oil or crisco. My grandmother often makes up the dry ingredients for her biscuits and leaves it in a Mason jar until she needs it. We did this with pancakes while camping and it worked great! (Of course there's only 2 of us, so it was easy to add the liquid and shake and pour).
Pancake mix is so easy and cheap to make, you definitely don't have to buy store bought mix!
Just my 2 cents 🙂
Love to hear about drinking water as a primary beverage! I've never developed a soda or even juice habit, because we just weren't raised on it. The vast majority of the time our options were water and... water! Other beverages always seemed like a special treat, as they should be. They are mostly a waste of calories, and money.
Wow great posts. I saved about $20 in coupons this past week. You may want to get back into it. That adds up in this economy. You can email the companies of the products you buy and ask. Some will give and some will not. I love the dollar ones. It helps and you can use it to try other products they make too. Best of luck this week.
My mom always mixed up the dry ingredients for pancakes and kept the mix in an ice cream pail. Then when you make pancakes, all you have to do is add the eggs, oil and milk. Here's her mix recipe:
12 cups flour
1/2 cup baking powder
3/4 cup sugar ( l leave the sugar out since you put syrup on them anyway)
2 TBSP salt
Then to make pancakes,
1 cup pancake mix
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
It saves a little bit of time. and if you want, you can use the mix to make biscuits too, just add less liquid ingredients to make a dough rather than a batter!
I guess if you wanted to use buttermilk, you would just replace the oil and milk with one cup of buttermilk?
Buttermilk actually usually has very little fat in it, so I wouldn't sub it for oil or butter. 🙂
I use a pancake mix from my "More with Less" cookbook and I think its wonderful. It uses dry milk instead of milk and I think I just add some water, an egg and some sort of oil. Instead of oil a lot of times I'll add pumpkin which is a wonderful way to add some healthy stuff and cut down on fat.
Pancakes are becoming a daily occurrence over here since I began training for my half marathon is October, I'm making the most of it - the only other time I eat like this is when I'm pregnant! It might be a cultural thing (UK reader) but I use normal milk. It is very easy to store the dry ingredients together for me, as it consists of erm... plain flour! I'm now wondering if my pancakes are grim! I'm going to try buttermilk ones asap. As they get topped with lemon and sugar or syrup they taste okay. In fact we have been topping with ice-cream, syrup and cream (as a dessert after dinner)... like I said I've been indulging somewhat. There's probably a very good reason why I shouldn't be doing this (no-one has had food poisoning yet) but when I make too much pancake mix at dinner I cover and leave in the fridge over night and then re-beat the mixture the next morning for breakfast. If this is a no-no please can someone give me a heads up!!!!
I might also try dry milk - sounds like a great emergency meal from the storecupboard to me....
On this side of the pond, a typical pancake batter includes flour, leaven (baking soda, baking powder, or very rarely sourdough batter), sugar, egg, oil, liquid dairy. What have you been putting in yours?
Hope you're sitting down...
2 eggs, plain flour and milk - that's it. I vary the milk/flour content dependent on whether I make French crepe style pancakes (very thin and big), British ( a bit thicker but still big) or 'American' (thicker and smaller). I've also made the 'American version' with self-raising flour - which gives it a lift as that contains baking powder. I probably should add a pinch of salt every time(but always struggle with the point of that? so do it few and far between if I remember). Because I always top the pancake with something it tastes okay, in my opinion however I've never have any complaints (perhaps I have very polite family and friends?).
I've done that with no problems so far. My family won't eat re-heated/toasted in the toaster pancakes, so I just save the batter.
My mom used to do something similar - if we had leftover mix from breakfast, she'd put it in the fridge, then add some flour, baking powder, and sugar at dinner, pour the mix over some canned, drained fruit, and make an upside down cake!
FG - why don't you like Crisco?
Chris - nutritionalists estimate that most adults need only 40-50 grams of protein per day. A medium chicken breast has 55-60 grams.
Good to know, thank you!
Plus, protein sort of gets reused in the body so we don't really need to replenish it as often. It also depletes calcium (which is the tricky part if you get most of your calcium from protein-rich dairy). O well, I'm far from vegetarian, whatchagunnado?
I love AB's pancake mix - but I have to admit that I take shortcuts with it most of the time. They come out a little bit fluffier if you separate the eggs but I found that as long as you whisk the eggs first they are plenty fluffy enough for every day pancakes:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/instant-pancake-mix-recipe/index.html
I do insist on buttermilk pancakes - they just taste better!
If anyone is interested in learning the benefits about wheat grinder and how to use fresh milled flour. I highly recommend you visit http://www.breadbeckers.com. You can order an awesome FREE CD about the benefits of wheat and its history. They also have FREE video class on cooking with wheat and other interesting classes. It's also a store.
I've been making my own pancake mix for years - just add egg, water, oil to make a batter.
here's the link to the recipe:
http://thriftathome.blogspot.com/2010/01/saturday-morning-pancakes.html
I use to use vegetable oil for my pancakes, but once I started making them from scratch, I started using EVOO and noticed a wonderful absence of the oily taste! I also fluff my eggs nicely before adding the milk and oil, makes them nice and fluffly!
Pancake Mix
6 cups all-purpose flour (I use half whole-wheat flour)
3 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
Stir together all ingredients in a large bowl; store in a zip-top plastic bag up to 6 weeks.
Basic Pancakes
1 ½ cups Pancake Mix
1 tbsp sugar
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Combine Pancake Mix and sugar in a medium bowl.
Whisk together 1 ½ cups buttermilk, egg, and oil; add to dry ingredients, whisking just until lumps disappear.
Pour about ½ cup batter for each pancake onto a hot, lightly greased (I used butter flavor Crisco) griddle or large nonstick skillet. Cook pancakes 2 minutes or until tops are covered with bubbles and edges begin to look cooked; turn and cook 2 more minutes or until done.