Easy Whole Grain Gluten-Free Pancakes Recipe (2024)

These whole grain pancakes are easy to make and gluten free! Simply prep the night before and wake up with the batter ready to make for a quick, delicious, gluten-free breakfast. Top your pancakes with butter and maple syrup or sorghum syrup.

I’m kind of slow to try new things.

Example: I refused to learn how to use a graphing calculator in high school calc/trig because I didn’t want to learn “one more piece of technology.” So stubborn! And yes, I see the irony in opting out of new technology at age 17 in this ever-changing, technologically dependent world I now find myself in. Ha! Joke’s on me…

Example: I wanted to try a natural DIY dusting spray for years before I finally mixed some up…which of course took all of 5 minutes.

Example: I didn’t have a smart phone until last Thanksgiving when my husband handed his old one down to me.

There’s a reason I’m so comfortable in talking about baby steps here at Kitchen Stewardship^® – it’s because I need them myself! I’m just glad that others resonate with that need. It makes me feel much more normal.

A really good example of my slow-to-move tendency has been my resistance to trying conventional gluten-free recipes. It’s been about four years now since our family discovered that we really should cut gluten down or out, and I’m just in the last year starting to learn to bake with actual gluten-free flours instead of strictly the coconut flour or almond flour I chose to start with (because it seemed easier, and it is!).

The Gluten-Free Flour Baby Step Number One

Finally last fall I figured out how to make our previously favorite easy pumpkin muffin recipe into a delicious gluten-free version, and by golly, that felt pretty good!

Of course, that recipe is so versatile, I think you could forget half the ingredients and mix it up while standing on your head and the muffins would still work out…but that’s why I started there!

One reason I was so hesitant to jump into gluten-free baking is because nearly all the recipes call for many flours, sometimes three, sometimes five, and sourcing those to have on hand and measuring them all out seemed like a lot of work and risk to me (if you didn’t like a recipe).

After three years, of course, I had slowly built up a stash of GF flours, so more recipes were accessible to me, but I still didn’t bother with them all that often – the whole “something new” aversion I guess, and the fact that all those flours can take a long time.

GLUTEN-FREE CAN BE CONFUSING BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HARD!

I’m thrilled to share a FREE gluten-free cheat sheet mini eBook to help get you started!This is perfect if you’ve just been told you need a GF diet, if you have a friend or family member eating GF and you’d like to cook for them, or if you’re just curious what it’s all about!

Get The GF Cheat sheet

Once we were pretty well established at eating gluten-free, my next step was to get it on my list to mix up a gluten-free flour blend so that I could speed up the process of baking since I wouldn’t have to get out all those flours every time.

I wasn’t generally happy with the options I was seeing online – either there was a lot of starch or a flour I didn’t have yet even after 3 years of baking GF. Same problem with commercial blends, which were often highly refined. It felt like a huge step backward in baking to go from soaked, home-ground whole wheat to refined flours, you know?

I decided to be bold and create my own blend – I realized that when I tried adapting a whole wheat flour recipe (like the pumpkin muffins) to GF, I would use two or three of the following flours:

• buckwheat
• sorghum
• brown rice

After reading the great explanation of gluten-free flour blends and the balance of protein to starch in Kimi Harris’s mini eBook Whole Grain Gluten-Free Muffins, which is now a free bonus item that comes with my eBook The Healthy Lunch Box, I felt pretty confident in adding slightly more than 25% arrowroot starch plus the flours above and giving it a try.

Success!

My new GF flour mix has worked in these homemade crackers, the pumpkin muffins mentioned above, and now these new pancakes!

Recipe: Mostly Whole Grain Gluten-Free Flour Mix

If you’ve been like me and hesitant to purchase or create an easy gluten-free flour mix, I hope you’ll try this one. A few recipe testers helping me out with my spa party eBook (coming end of this month – very excited!!) have also tried it in other recipes with great success.

In fact, one husband said this about the gluten-free version of the wheat thin crackers:

“Wow, I finally get to eat a cracker that tastes like something other than glue.”

It’s easy to mix up a batch. Just pour the following into a gallon plastic bag (or any container):

• 2 c. buckwheat flour (freshly ground really is best)
• 2 c. brown rice flour (mine is home ground as well)
• 2 c. sorghum flour (I use Bob’s Red Mill)
• 2 1/2 c. arrowroot starch

Mix together. Store in the freezer.

Use in any recipe approved for GF flour blends and some that aren’t!

I cannot tell you how much easier, mentally, having a GF mix on hand makes tackling gluten-free recipes. Quick!

And Now to Make my Family Happy

Years ago when I was first looking for the perfect whole wheat pancake recipe, I tried quite a few before settling on our absolute favorite – a fluffy, moist version that I shared right here. We adored it for years until going gluten-light, and although I actually make a LOT of pancakes, quite often, we never really settled on a favorite “basic” whole grain recipe as a family favorite.

Now I’ve finally gotten to resurrect the old favorite in a new way:

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100% Whole Grain Gluten-free Pancake Variation

As starches go, arrowroot is actually pretty healthy, from what I understand, but if you’d like to up the “whole grains” to 100%, it’s totally doable with these adaptations! In fact the second one might even be better than the blend…

100% Whole Grain GF Pancake Recipe no. 1

The big change between the GF version and the original whole wheat was that I realized I needed to add some liquid as the pancakes were very dry. To take out even more starch, I sought to add even more moisture, and it worked! If you don’t feel like making a flour blend, this is a great, quick option too.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
• 1 1/2 c. sorghum flour
• 1 1/2 c. milk
• 1 1/4 c. water
• 1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 c. coconut oil, melted
• 4 eggs
• 3 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt

Follow the same instructions above to make the pancakes.

This version might seem too thin when you mix it up, but after soaking overnight it really thickens up. The resulting pancakes are thick and fluffy and have a really hearty flavor. They cook really quickly with lots of bubbles evident, so be careful not to overcook or they’ll become dry.

100% Whole Grain GF Pancake Recipe no. 2

When we went camping just before school started, I decided we were finally going to get to take our favorite recipe again – it had always been our “camping pancake,” and the time we brought a different gluten-free recipe sort of ended in a hilarious disaster.

Your kids can learn to cook, even if you don’t know where to start

My 4 kids and I created the online Kids Cook Real Food lessons to help bring real food and independence to families all over. Over 10,000 kids have joined us and we’d love to invite you along for the adventure!

I’m so pleased to offer a little gift from our family to yours, a knife skills lesson as a free preview of the full cooking eCourse!

Get The Free Knife Skills Lesson!

I tweaked the recipe above even further and they were the best pancakes ever! Of course, that may have been because they were cooked in bacon grease out in the woods and all food tastes better when you’re camping…so I look forward to hearing in the comments which version you try and how it goes.

Ingredients:

• 1 c. brown rice flour
• 1 c. sorghum flour
• 1 c. freshly ground buckwheat flour
• 1 1/2 c. milk
• 1 c. water
• 1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 c. + 2 Tbs. coconut oil, melted (included in the soak)
• 4 eggs
• 3 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt

Follow the same instructions above to make the pancakes.

Want to know how else pancakes taste extra amazing? When your kids make them for you! Maybe on a lazy Saturday morning or even on a school day. It is possible when your kids know how to cook.

Kids Research and Create Gluten-Free Waffles, Too!

Our members at Kids Cook Real Food are just amazing.

Check out what Jude, Avonlea, and Maisie figured out one morning when they wanted waffles, and had our gluten-free flour blend made up already (from the measuring lessons in the course):

Way to go, science geek young chefs!

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