Pioneer style pancakes, anyone?

Our niece mentioned, the other day, that she missed Mathilde’s sour dough pancakes. Wished she had the recipe.
I gotta tell you, I grew up on those pancakes. We ate them every morning of the year. My earliest breakfast memories are of Mathilde standing in front of her wood cookstove, flipping pancakes for her large family. At that time, there were nine of us who gathered around her table at 6:30am every day. Breakfast normally consisted of cracked-wheat cereal (which I never liked) or maybe a malt-o-meal-type homemade 'mush' (which I wasn't all that fond of either), fried eggs, bacon and sour dough pancakes with her home-made syrup. Adults drank coffee, postum or water. My brother, sister and I got milk - sometimes still warm from the cow. It was a hearty breakfast that had to tide us over until Mathilde served dinner at 12 noon.
I suppose if you analyzed Mathilde's meals, they'd flunk a nutritionist’s scrutiny. She didn't worry about calories or cholesterol. I doubt she ever even heard the terms. What she did worry about was giving us enough to keep us going. Winters in Jackson Hole were long, cold and difficult. Summers weren't all that different. We noticed if there was frost on the ground in mid-July but it wasn't shocking. We knew we could get actual snow any month of the year. Besides, in Mathilde's opinion, a lot of things could come along and make a day difficult but if a person had a good, substantial breakfast under his belt, he could face it much easier.
Some folks love sour dough. I did as a kid. And for those who do, here are some basic recipes for you to try.

First things first, you have to brew up some starter. Mathilde had a fat little brown crock that she kept her starter in. Nowadays those crocks have a hole in the lid. Mine does. Mathilde's didn't. Don't think it needed one because her home was uninsulated and the only heat came from the kitchen cookstove and a slightly larger wood heater in the living room. It might be -45F outside but we still slept with the windows to our bedrooms cracked open for fresh air. - So, it wasn't warm enough in that house for Mathilde's crock to need a hole. If you can't find a crock or if you just want to try sour dough just to say you did, I'm sure you could use a large fruit jar or a bowl or something. Haven't done it, myself. Haven't needed to.
Before I go any farther, I also need to say these recipes for sour dough starter weren’t Mathilde’s. I don’t know when her starter was first begun. My guess is that it originally came from Nephi’s mother when he first left home in 1902. I am not aware that Mathilde’s starter was ever allowed to run out until after her son, Merrill, died in 1992. If your starter is used regularly, as hers was, it’s constantly replaced and does not have to be restarted.

SOUR DOUGH STARTER

Recipe #1
Mix together and let set out overnight:
2 C. Flour
(just less than) 2 C. water
1 pkg dry yeast

This is a good recipe for making:

Scones -
Pour some starter in a bowl. Add:

2 t. Baking Powder

1 t. Sugar

Enough flour to make a stiff dough.

Drop by spoonfuls into hot oil. Cook to golden brown on both sides, turning as needed.

Drain and serve. Honey-butter or jam is good on these.

You’ll notice these instructions are rather imprecise. Pioneer cooks didn’t measure the way we do. They grew up knowing how much to use through experience. All of these recipes say ‘pour some starter in a bowl’. And that’s exactly what Mathilde did. But you always have to leave some starter in the crock to keep the yeast going.

Also, when she measured things like baking powder, soda or sugar into her sour dough, she didn’t use measuring spoons. She used a desert spoon from her silverware drawer. Baking powder and sugar in the above recipe would have been sprinkled over the starter in the bowl.

Recipe #2 (This starter recipe came from my mother-in-law who was a superb cook and, because she worked in a school cafeteria, she was more into using precise measurements.)

Combine in bowl or crock:

1/2 pkg dry yeast (1 1/4 t.)

2 C. sifted flour

2 T sugar

2 1/2 C warm water

When combined, cover with a cloth. Let stand in a warm place for 2 days.

To replenish, each time some is used, add:

2 C. flour
2 C. warm water

Stir briefly.

ALWAYS, when you use some of your starter, replenish it. I don’t remember ever measuring the water and flour – Mathilde just dumped a healthy scoop of flour in and added water until it looked the right consistency.  I still have the metal scoop she kept in her flour bin and she used a coffee cup for adding water. If there was going to be company at her table, she made more. If someone was away on business, she made a little less. Again, that came with practice. Better to follow the recipe until you get the hang of it.

For pancakes, I can offer the following recipes. The first one is a little fancier. I’ve never made it but it’s said to be very good.

Pancakes #1 -
Pour some starter in a bowl. Add:

3 Eggs

2 t. Baking Powder

2 t. Oil

1 t. Sugar

1 t. Salt

Mix together. Fry on greased griddle.

Mathilde Moulton's pancake recipe was as follows.

Pour some starter in a bowl, leaving at least a little in the crock to get the flour and water started turning sour for the next day.

Add:

1 or 2 Eggs (Mathilde used 1. I like eggs. I use 2.)

2 heaping desert spoons of sugar

1 spoonful of soda (mash in palm of hand to break up lumps, then sprinkle over bowl contents)

Beat with a large spoon until dough thickens. If you want thick pancakes, leave it at that. If you want them a little thinner, keep beating with spoon and the batter will get thin again. It’s weird that way.

Cook on greased griddle. Mathilde always used left-over bacon grease to grease her griddle.

Another breakfast memory I have was of Mathilde’s son, Merrill, flipping pancakes. Mathilde’s griddle was rectangular with slightly raised edges and a decently long handle. After she could no longer do the cooking, Merrill frequently cooked the breakfasts and he loved to delight us kids with his pancake flipping abilities. While Mathilde always used a pancake turner, Merrill was adept at flipping them a couple feet in the air and catching them square on the griddle. That was so much fun.

Of course pancakes aren’t pancakes without syrup. I doubt Aunt Jemima’s ever saw the light of day until Mathilde was getting on in years. She wouldn’t have had the opportunity to buy it anyway so she made her own syrup. Her recipe follows:

Pancake syrup:

In a sauce pan mix:

1 C. white sugar

1 C . packed brown sugar

2 C. water

Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and serve. Can be kept in the refrigerator for a week or more. Hers never lasted that long.

Myself, I’m very partial to maple flavor and a little more robust syrup so I cut the water to 1 ½ C or less and sometimes add a little clear corn syrup. Once the mixture boils, I turn off the heat and pour in some mapeline flavoring. I don’t measure. A capful is stingy. A good glug out of the mapeline bottle is about right. After all, if a little is good, a bunch is better, right?