Professional Chef's Best Bacon Pancakes Recipe!

I've been cooking and eating pancakes my entire life and I learned long ago how fun and tasty they can be but it's really only in the last few years that I've started focusing on how healthy they can be without compromising their flavor because what's the point of a healthy pancake if no one will eat it? Here's everything you need to whisk together a batch of country pancakes full of lots of whole grain goodness and with that in mind start with the dry ingredients with one cup of any white flour with one cup of rolled oats and one cup of any whole wheat flour. This is red fife flour one of Canada's heritage grains and like any whole wheat flour it adds a ton of flavor well beyond the blandness of just plain white flour. Two tablespoons of baking powder is all it takes for these pancakes to rise. A half a teaspoon of salt will help accent all the savory flavors in the whole wheat as well. Now for the wet ingredients pretty standard here two cups of milk two eggs and a quarter cup of cooking oil. These will be anything but plain white pancakes which doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will like them until you add my two secret ingredients nutmeg and vanilla. Whether they know it or not every kid loves nutmeg because nutmeg is the flavor of old-fashioned donuts. Vanilla's job is to make these healthy pancakes taste like some kind of pastry just a teaspoon or so is all it takes. It's always a good idea to whisk the dry ingredients first and it really doesn't matter whether you add the dry to the wet or the wet to the dry just don't use a whisk. Switch to a wooden spoon it's a lot easier. Whether you're cooking pancakes on a griddle or in a skillet the best way to do it is over medium heat not so high that they burn but not so low either that they just sort of sit around and slow down breakfast. It is the sort of thing that you'll dial in very very quickly when you start cooking pancakes regularly and no matter what always start with a big splash of oil. It's also a lot easier to deal with a lot of small pancakes as opposed to a few large ones. Small ones are just easier to flip and speaking of flipping the best way to know it's time to go is simply to just just peek just look under the edge. If you're seeing golden brown then go for it and don't hesitate get right in there and flip it over. Now I know these are supposed to be healthy pancakes and they most definitely are but what's a pancake without a little butter on top and if you're anything like me you know that little hard butter bit on top of a warm pancake and you're kind of waiting for it to melt it's tearing into the pancake and messing everything up. No no no no no way here's a better way to do it just butter the pancakes on the griddle first. These are ready for syrup and of course it's up to you how much butter to add to the pancakes and and whether you use butter at all but if you're still having trouble convincing someone to try these healthy pancakes you're going to want to try this trick. When in doubt break out the bacon and let go of the idea that you're making healthy pancakes because this bacon's not going next to the pancakes it's going in them. Fry the bacon crisp and then form two slices together and pour batter right over top of them right into the bacon fat. Now I'll be the first to admit these are not healthy pancakes anymore but that's okay because pancakes are perfect for stirring ideas into. Even with all that bacon flavor I can still taste the whole grains and the nutmeg. There's a healthy pancake in there somewhere.