Have you had Buckwheat Pancakes yet? If you are new to the gluten free diet, I’m sure you are wondering what the heck the word “wheat” is doing there. Well, we’ll tell ya!

Buckwheat flour is one of the most nutritional flours you can use & it’s totally gluten free! Although Buckwheat is not a true grain, it can be used as a substitute for gluten free cooking & baking! Buckwheat kernels are called groats. The groats range from a tan to a greenish hue. After the groats have been roasted, they turn into a dark brown. Although I’ve never tried it, the groats can be cooked & made into porridge. It’s been around for centuries and is tried & true!

I buy mine at Winco from the bulk food bins. Be aware that the risk for cross contamination is much higher there. We haven’t had a problem, but you do take your chances every time you go. Arrowhead Mills offers a fabulous Buckwheat flour, which you can get at most grocery stores offering gluten free products. Just an FYI- Bob’s Red Mill Buckwheat Flour is NOT gluten free!

 

Some health benefits from Buckwheat:

-Buckwheat has more protein than wheat, rice, corn & millet, making it second to oats.
-It’s extremely high in fiber; 17 grams per 1 cup.
-It helps slow down the rate of glucose absorption. This makes it a great flour to use if you suffer from diabetes or have celiac disease, especially since celiac’s are at a higher risk of getting diabetes.
-It contains all nine essential amino acids: lysine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, methionin, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan & valine.
-It lowers cholesterol.

All in all, buckwheat is a super food flour  we can all benefit from. By replacing things like white rice flour with buckwheat flour, we are enhancing the healthy factor in our recipes. Recently, I have become obsessed with the texture & flavor. For those of you who haven’t tasted it, you need to know that it has a distinct flavor. It will change the overall flavor of your recipe. It has a sort of grainy texture & it tastes almost nutty. It’s very dense as well. It might not be your favorite taste at first but it grows on you. I wasn’t too sure about it the first time I tried & now I can’t stay out of it. The first recipe I tried was cookies, believe it or not. Let’s just say I have the cookies down to a science.. Haha! I’ll share that recipe soon!

But for now, here is a lovely recipe for 100% pure buckwheat pancakes. You can always dilute the buckwheat or tone it down by exchanging some of the buckwheat flour with another flour of your choice. I wanted to use buckwheat & only buckwheat to make it the healthiest pancake I possibly could!

Again, I wanted to make a very healthy pancake because, as I mention in our Cottage Cheese Pancakes post, I have this weird prejudice against breakfast. I feel like there are a ton of dessert-for-breakfast recipes out there. I have to start my day with protein or something healthy because if I don’t, my day is slaughtered. I feel bloated, tired & sometimes sick for the rest of the day. So I am always trying to find a healthier breakfast. This buckwheat pancake recipe errs on the side of “not sweet”. If you would like it more sweet, add more. But let’s remember, we usually dump sugar toppings on pancakes, so you really don’t need the actual pancake to be that sweet.

Sugar Free

I know this post is getting a little long & a tad wordy, but I would like to introduce what I’ve been using to replace my hard (granulated) sugar. I won’t go into too much detail here (I’ll save that for another time) but I can’t tell you how amazing this is! I use Kirkland 100% Pure Maple Syrup Grade A (You can get it at Costco for a cheaper price than what’s listed on Amazon, but if you don’t have a membership, the price listed in the link is still better than the others I saw). I’ve used this in my baking & cooking, such as cookies, pancake batter, balsamic vinigerate, & chicken glaze. You name it- it works!  I can’t even taste the maple syrup when it’s all said and done. It’s SO SO SO much better for you than sugar. Again, I will go into this further in a later post, but I had to tell you why it’s in this recipe. Enjoy!

 

Peach Buckwheat Pancakes

If you are interested in reading more on buckwheat pancakes, here are two wonderful articles I used while writing this post:
http://www.oprah.com/health/Buckwheat-Dr-Perricones-No-5-Superfood
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/wellbeing/nutrition/the-powerful-health-benefits-of-buckwheat.php