I am such a whole wheat girl. I love my freshly ground hard white wheat. I order 500 pounds of wheat at a time for goodness sake. But, in an effort to add variety to our diets, I’ve been on a mission to try different grains.
As you know, I’ve done a fair amount of experimenting lately with Coconut Flour (which isn’t a grain, but it does add variety to our healthy baked goods). Recently, my dear friend Angie sent me this Pumpkin Waffle recipe, and then another dear friend Jenny (who is Angie’s sister) affirmed how good these are – so I went for it. This recipe calls for several different grains and none of them are wheat. Look at me, growing in my grain varieties! Hey, it’s not difficult when you have good recipes like this one. In fact, my kids loved them and my pickiest eater even said, “Wow, these taste like your homemade donuts!” I think we have a winner.
Multi-Grain Pumpkin Waffles and Pancakes
1 cup sorghum or barley flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/3 cup millet flour
1/3 cup brown rice flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
4 tablespoons melted coconut oil
4 tablespoons maple syrup or sucanat
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups milk (or coconut milk if you’re going for dairy free also)
Whisk together dry ingredients. Beat the wet into the dry ingredients to combine. Cook the batter in a waffle iron – greasing well between each batch. Or, add a few extra tablespoons of milk and cook the batter into pancakes.
I can attest to the fact that it’s best to keep your waffle iron greased well to keep these from sticking. Otherwise, these were easy to make and incredibly delicious. And we just added some multi-grain variety to our diets. It wasn’t even painful. ;) Remember, my nine year old thinks these taste like donuts. That’s a multi-grain transition anyone can make!
What grains do you eat at your house? Have you ventured beyond whole wheat yet?
Wow, we just made the decision to go gluten free & these sound wonderful. Can’t wait to get all the ingredients to try them. :-)
Are these gluten-free? Sorry, may be a silly question but I am trying to learn what is and isn’t. I’ve noticed a big difference in how I feel when I cut out the things I know have gluten in them. Now I’m working on figuring out the things that aren’t quite as obvious and it’s a little overwhelming at first!
They’d be GF without the barley flour, so use the sorghum flour.
Grains which contain gluten are: wheat, barley and rye. Oats also have gluten unless they specifically state that they are gluten free. In addition, kamut and spelt are in the wheat “family”, so some who avoid gluten must avoid those as well. :)
So yes, if you avoid the barley flour in these, they would be totally gluten free!
Oats don’t naturally contain gluten, but are often processed in facilities that handle grains that contain gluten; which is why people who are avoiding gluten should look for “gluten free” oats.
Yummy! Waffles are on the menu for next week, and pumpkin sounds like a good addition. I might have to stick with a wheat-based recipe though since I don’t have those other flours on hand.
These sound awesome! Especially that your picky eater liked them, I have one of my own. :)
I did have a question though, all of the flours you used can you just grind them in a grain mill? Rice flour is something I have never used and I just have no idea.
Thanks so much for all your awesome recipes and inspiration.
I make similar pancakes and waffles with all types of grains other than wheat (Kamut, oats, brown rice, millet, quinoa, etc). I just mix them all together and put them in the grain mill. They grind up just fine and make incredible pancakes. Everyone loves them.
Yep, I just ground all of these grains in my grain mill – rice goes right through!
My question is….does he even know what donuts taste like? :-D Only kidding! Can’t wait to try these!
I love using different grains. I use a mix of 6 cups wheat berries, 1 cup barley, 1 cup rye (good source of lysine), 1 cup oat groats (good for lowering cholesterol) and 1 cup brown rice. Grind them up in in your grain mill. It makes GREAT waffles, pancakes and dinner rolls. You could put some kamut or spelt in there too, just not together because their flavors kind of compete.
I’ll have to give these a try! I use all these grains too.
Thanks for the recipe!
I don’t use plain ole wheat anymore. I use a blend of Kamut & Spelt (actually, these are both wheat, but organic/heirloom type varieties) in my bread. I had to be gluten free for a time & I ground a lot of millet, rice, quinoa, chickpea, corn, lentils, etc. to make yummy baked goods.
Sue Gregg (.com) has wonderful recipes for blender batter recipes. There are so many variations for waffles/pancakes. Our favorite for a while was rice & millet pancakes with almond extract instead of vanilla. Yum! A good sneaky recipe for those used to white flour. But yes, lube up that waffle maker with coconut oil b/c they will stick.
Since I only have hard white wheat flour, can I just substitute that for all of the other flours? Thanks!
I’m not sure – you could always try it, then add additional milk if the mixture is too thick.
thank you Laura, I plan to make these in the morning! Really enjoy your site.
This may be an onerous request; if so feel free to ignore. I would find it immensely helpful to have the quantities of flours given in weights, if you are the type of baker inclined to weighing. I fresh grind all my whole grains before using, and weights would allow me to mix up the dry ingredients without having to individually grind all the grains first and end up with left-over flours. Eight ounces of wheat berries = eight ounces of flour, regardless of volume, so I just weight each into my blender, zeroing the scale out in between, grind and go. Or do the same into a bowl and then run everything through my mill.
Anyway, that’s my small suggestion/tip/request. Thanks for this recipe, it looks delicious.
Lily, you likely know about this already but the King Arthur website has a volume-to-weight conversion chart that I’ve printed out in booklet form and use for most of my bread baking and other recipes. It certainly is easier to weigh 4 cups of flour, for example, than measure them out. It’s interesting that one cup of one type of flour can weigh more or less than one cup of another type of flour. I printed a duplicate of the flours page and taped it to my scale for easy reference. Hope this helps!
I would like to reserve the right to test taste this heavenly delight. Back when I geared up to make bread daily I got into all the different flours; etc.
Had to quit ~ gave away lots of bread but ate to much and gained weight. Poor, Mr Mixer just sits on the shelf.
Enjoyed your post.
Just a suggestion: if you separate the eggs from the whites, beat the whites until stiff peaks form, then fold in at the end of mixing everything else together, you’ll get a lighter, less dense waffle. These look fantastic, and I cant wait to try them!
These are amazing. Just finished having them for breakfast for the first time. My kids loved them too. Thanks!