Wheatarded.com Wheat Intolerance and Wheat Allergy Resources

Spelt pancakes

This past week, I picked up some white spelt flour from my local Whole Foods. For the past year, I have avoided baking due to the complexities of avoiding wheat flour, but have become determined to get back into the game. I have been pondering two questions:

1. In what applications can spelt flour be used as a direct substitute for all-purpose wheat flour?
2. Are there recipes for wheat-free baked goods that don't involve mail-ordering exotic ingredients?

My pancake adventure is the first of a three-part series that attempts to shed light on these inquiries. I took the spelt pancake recipe from the Our Big Earth website, which in turn claims to have adapted it from a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. It's no secret how to make pancakes. Looking at Alton Brown's pancake mix recipe, the ingredients and proportions are mostly the same.

First, I halved the recipe. I just can't eat 12 pancakes by myself, and don't have space for too many leftovers. I found that the batter was not thick enough after mixing, and added some extra spelt flour to thicken it up, which worked just fine (the extra 2-3 tbsp of flour that the recipe calls for are no joke). The batter poured fine, and the texture of the resulting pancakes was normal. No one would have known that these were made from spelt instead of wheat. Taste-wise, they were a little lacking, but that doesn't seem to be a function of the spelt. Were I to make these again, I would:

1. Increase the amount of sugar and cinnamon, and add some nutmeg (personal preference).
2. Use buttermilk instead of 2% milk. The recipe calls for milk in the ingredient list, but references buttermilk in the instructions. Considering that Alton Brown's recipe using buttermilk, I'm guessing that was the way to go.
3. Create a large batch of the dry mix, as Alton Brown suggests, and store it for up to 3 months to save time in the morning (which, for me, is the worst time to attempt the precise measuring of ingredients!).

Check back later for more culinary adventures with spelt: spelt macaroni and cheese (using spelt pasta elbows and a spelt roux), and spelt chocolate chip cookies.