Gluten Free Sourdough Starter Banana Pancakes

I am loving these gluten free sourdough starter banana pancakes! I love the taste of sourdough everything and am really psyched about my gluten free experiments. I have been making them for a while now, a big bunch every time and freezing it for a quick snack or meal later in the week.

These pancakes are naturally gluten free, whole grain, meaning lots of fiber and nutrients. The starter for these pancakes is made of buckwheat and it is the easiest starter you can imagine! I’ve been playing around with gluten free sourdough for a couple of weeks now and I am liking the results.
The taste is wonderfully sour and cheesy.
I am using this easy method for baking gluten free sourdough banana pancakes, whole grain sourdough bread and even crackers.

There is no throwing away of starters and all the seemingly daunting steps here. I feed the starter during about seven days and then use 80 to 90% of it in a recipe and start again building it up from there.
The starter you see below is the one I have been using for a while now and it gets better and better the older it is.

Why is sourdough better for the gut?

Sourdough bread is easier to digest than bread baked with yeast. This is due to sourdough bread’s pre-biotic and pro-biotic properties like you also find in sauerkraut. Regularly consuming these may help improve gut health and digestion.

Sourdough fermentation of gluten free flowers may also help improve the taste, texture and nutrient availability making it healthier and better tasting.

Sourdough based breads, pancakes and other baked goods have a lower phytate content [ by 24 – 50% lower ] thanks to the lactic acid bacteria found in the sourdough which help degrade phytates. Lower phytates mean better absorption of minerals like potassium, phosphate, magnesium and zinc.

Gluten free sourdough starter recipe

I started my starter a few months ago with a 1/4 cup of buckwheat flour and a 1/4 cup of water mixed together in a clean glass jar, it should be the consistency of a pancake batter. Every day I add about 2 tbsp flour and 2 Tbsp of water, stir it in with a plastic spoon and cover the glas jar with a clean kitchen towel.

On day 7 my jar is full, the starter is fluffy and ready to be used. In the pancake recipe I use 3/4 of a cup of the starter and pour in the remaining starter into a clean jar and start the whole feeding process again.
With this amount you taste the sourdough well, the combination with the sweetness of the bananas is pretty good.

The day before baking I make my batter, not adding in the bananas yet. I mix in my buckwheat flour, here I also used teff, an ancient grain very rich in nutrients and has a delicious taste. You can basically make your own blend, you can also use quinoa, sorghum, amarant, brown rice or even lentil or chickpea flour. The batter should be thick like below, before baking I add the bananas and that will make it a little thinner.

The bananas should be ripe, which means a little spotty on the outside and mashed really well, no chunks. Unripe bananas are hard, not sweet and the structure doesn’t work well in baked goods. This also applies for recipes like my healthy chocolate banana bread.

I heat my non-stick non-toxic frying pan well on a medium heat before scooping in the batter and bake these gluten free sourdough starter banana pancakes like any other pancake. Something I do is putting a lid on while baking them, this is not necessary. Thanks to the long fermentation they are airy, soft and light on the inside. Delicious with maple syrup or some plant based yogurt and fresh fruit or a warm fruit sauce.

For more gluten free breakfast ideas take a look at my Gluten Free Waffles made with my own gluten free flour blend or my favorite Whole Grain Buckwheat Millet Bread recipe, no rising time, yeast free.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do! Sourdough is much easier to work with than it sounds, just play around with it as do I. More recipes will follow and will link them here,

Tina x

ps. if you like this recipe pin this picture below to your Pinterest board