I have a cycle I go through when cooking. I find a new fun item (such as specialty flours made from heirloom wheat), or a new technique (like sourdough). I learn how to do some simple thing like make a lovely loaf of bread or irresistible pancakes. I do this for a while and then somehow, something happens and in a temporary breakdown of the process I have a culinary disaster.

Twice this week I have made incredibly bad pancakes. The first time the pancakes were flatter than crepes but not nearly so eggy or edible. Even in their flatness the inside of the pancake was uncooked and the outside was crisp to the point of scorching. The recipe added baking powder to sourdough discard. However, my discard was so far gone that all semblance of structure had disappeared. It was like trying to cook pudding, since the baking powder had nothing to work with.

Well, I still wanted a pancake. I had some lovely blue corn meal so I decided I would try the Mount Vernon style flour mixture which is corn meal, barley flour, and wheat flour. I found a recipe that used buttermilk which I had left over from Easter angel buns. Sounds good, right? My ‘barley flour’ was malted barley flour. Malted barley flour used in small amounts enhances the rise of regular bread. A tablespoon or two would have been about right. I added half a cup. I didn’t have enough buttermilk so I added some cream.

I had also realized that my baking powder was perhaps a little old so when this witches brew didn’t bubble up I tried to add more baking powder. Well, this produced a bubbly but stiff mess at the top of my mixing bowl and something very watery and thin halfway down. No bounce. More pancakes that were flat and totally uncooked in the middle, but scorched on the top and bottom.

I tried pouring the mixture into muffin tins to rescue something from the wreck. The ‘muffins’ blew up and then sank back. I had to pry them out of the container after about half an hour of baking. The remains do taste good if they are reheated and buttered.

I had a long agonized moment of thinking that my brain had fallen into dementia and I was on the downward trajectory of life when I created not one but two disasters with pancakes in a single week. Possibly. It seems just as likely that a little hubris and distraction combined to produce this ridiculous result. Am I seriously thinking that I never had such disasters twenty years ago? I think that would be the real evidence of mental decline!

Three things were true. My sourdough discard was way overdone. It needed to be fed and left alone and then used. My baking powder was in fact getting weak. I have a new can. (I only had a tablespoon or two left in the old one that I tossed!) And malted barley flour should not to be used, cannot be used, just like plain old barley flour, if such a thing exists.

Header: Manhood. Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life painting series. NGA