While it is important to have dinner as a family as many times per week as you can manage, sometimes schedules just don’t allow. A lush and leisurely weekend breakfast can make up for some missed family dinners — and nothing says weekend breakfast like pancakes.

For such simple fare, there are a gazillion pancake recipes out there. Fruited, yeasted, sour creamed…the variations are tremendous. Diversity is great, but it pays to have one plain and simple,  perfect pancake recipe in your pocket.

There is no need to start from a mix – it really only takes seconds longer to prepare the batter from scratch. And the end results are well worth it.

I do like having a large cast iron griddle that fits over two of my stovetop burners. This allows me to make more pancakes at a time, so that I may actually enjoy eating them with my family.

I found this recipe in one of our town’s weekly newspapers. Here is the link. It is from the mother of a local woman, Ingrid Rockwell, who has a fabulous lunch cart, and she generously shared this recipe (and her husband’s waffle recipe) in the Isthmus.

It has an unusual ingredient that totally makes the recipe – vinegar. It doesn’t specify what kind, so I’ve been using cider. This makes a lot of pancakes.

Enjoy hot off the griddle,
with additional butter and warm maple syrup.

BB’s Pancakes (by Ingrid Rockwell, as featured in Madison, WI’s the Isthmus)

3 eggs
3 1/2 cups milk
6 T oil
3 T vinegar
3 1/2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1) Whisk eggs, milk, oil, and vinegar in bowl (I mix everything in my large pyrex liquid measuring cup, measuring out the milk first then adding the rest.)

2) In separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk to combine evenly.

3) Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients, and stir until just combined. There will be a few lumps, and that’s ok.

4) Let the batter sit for a minute while you heat a skillet until a drop of water sizzles on the surface. Melt some butter, and fry up some flapjacks.