 Okay, this is James P. Madonna of Megalike21 and the Facebook group Everything Is Food. I'm going to make my first batch of whole grain sourdough pumpkin pancakes for 2014. Okay, and it's in here. I made it last night. It's always good to let it ferment a little for the sourdough starter to really establish its rich flavor. Alright, you light the stove. You don't need to put the flame on medium or high for cast iron. And then take my rectangular cast iron griddle, put that in place, and let it preheat. It's very important that the cast iron griddle, if you happen to have one, is hot enough. The same thing with waffle irons. You have to have a very hot surface in order to make that nice golden brown pancakes with the ideal texture. Same thing with waffles. In order to get that nice brown color, it must be hot enough. So I'm going to let the pan get hot. I'm going to do this video in segments. Now, the batter. The sourdough pumpkin pancake batter. This was mixed in my Hitachi bread machine. Now, you could use a Vitamix. You can use a Ninja. I find it, you know, that why knock yourself out mixing it by hand when the machine can do it better? And it'll be easier on you. So I use the mixing cycle of the bread machine. But, you know, of course, I wish I had a Ninja. That's really eventually what I will get. What I did is, you always put the liquid in first. Liquid parts of the recipe. So I put in four cups of milk, four eggs, eight tablespoons of oil. I would use good cold pressed oil, whatever you happen to have. But myself, I had extra virgin olive oil. So I put the eight tablespoons of that. A heaping teaspoon of Himalayan pink salt. I would say about a half a cup of sourdough starter. Cinnamon. Powdered cinnamon. And six cups of the whole wheat flour. I use the King Arthur brand of whole wheat flour. Or you could use King Arthur's pastry flour. Or you could use King Arthur's white whole wheat, which is excellent. And then mix that up with the machine until smooth. Okay, now I'm going to test cast iron griddle to see if it's hot by splashing water on it. Yup, it's hot alright. It's hot. Not much, because when it's hot it will spread. In this case it's what I have, extra virgin olive oil. You could use other oils. You could use the peanut oil, which is great. It has a high burning threshold. I mean it doesn't, it takes very high temperatures before it burns. Great for stir frying. And some of it gets in the mold, but spread it around. Now we got some, I'm using a wooden ladle because you don't want to use metal. Anything metallic with sourdough starter. It kills the yeast. Alright. First I'm going to make silver dollar pancakes for someone in the house. And then I will of course make super jumbo pancakes for myself. Now, I could have used a larger plastic ladle, but I didn't bother to look for it. Which I really should, but I like using wooden spoons. Okay, we're going to let that cook on one side and then we'll test it. Okay, what you want to look for are the dryness around the edges with the little tiny pinhole bubbles. Then you want to check your pancake. Oh, pour that one in time. They're well done yet, but they're well done. I have this pan on, I had it on an upper low flame. I had to put it on very, very low. This is how efficient the cast iron is with holding heat evenly distributed. Alright, so these pancakes will be done in no time. And then I could probably get the third silver dollar in there. If you want to call them silver dollars. Yeah, I'm using this now. I got tired of the wooden ladle. This batch will be done in no time. Sour though, whole wheat, pumpkin pancakes. Okay, let me check. Let me check this. Alright, it's not bad. I love cast iron. A lot of people don't use cast iron because honestly, they're probably too lazy to lift it. It's heavy, but it'll last for generations if you take care of it. Now, the thing with cast iron is the secret to cast iron. Okay, you don't have to season it like the instructions tell you. Because as you use the cast iron and put oil on it or bacon or sausage, the fats of all kinds will darken the cast iron pot with usage. So it automatically seasons itself and the darker it gets, the better it cooks. The more non-stick it becomes. But the important thing is in the drying process. Never towel dry a cast iron pan because any moisture that remains on the cast iron will make it rusty. So what you want to do is flame dry it. Never scrub it with a steel wool or use soap. Just brush off the debris and then turn the flame on the stove as high as possible or the electric stove. Put it on very high and then place the wet pan on the flame and allow it to flame dry. Okay, I could have allowed this to get darker, but considering the fact that the others are kind of well done, I decided to flip it over. Now my pancakes, of course, are going to be much larger. My whole bunion style flapjacks. And then that's it. Put butter on it or if you can't have butter, you can use that smart bean or I can't believe it's not butter or whatever brand you choose to use. Personally, I like real natural maple syrup, but this time I'm using light pancake syrup with real butter. These are going to have the margarine without the trans fat. You know, like I can't believe it's not butter. One of those brands because it's for a patient. I'm going to use butter and light syrup. So that's pretty much it for the whole wheat sourdough pumpkin pancake batter made from scratch and in this case mixed by my Hitachi bread machine, which I love. And that's it. I'm going to make a big stack of this, pat it down if you want. Now you may have to turn the griddle up a little. In this case, I'm going to turn it up a little higher on both sides because it's fitting over two jets, which is great. Now if you want, what you can do is you can leave only one jet on if you're by yourself, if you're cooking alone. You can leave one jet on and you can use the back side of the griddle as like a warmer to keep things warm. You can stack the pancakes or sausages or bacon, scrapple, you know, if you're making eggs and breakfast sausage or whatever. Bacon, you can put it towards the back and use it as a warmup, like a warmer tray or something, a hot plate. You know, just keep it warm and just have the jet on the front. Or vice versa. And this works out also. Of course you can cook hamburgers on this, whatever you like. So this one is getting the pinholes. Very gently check it out. Yes, it is ready to turn. Not bad. All right, so there you have it. My first pumpkin sourdough pancakes for 2014. This is James P. Madonna saying, take care, eat healthy, and greetings to my ever-growing, large food and drink group called Everything Is Food on Facebook.