posted by Jennifer on bread, breakfast, recipe make over, Successes!!

I normally don’t make pancakes during the week, but I didn’t have a ton of stuff by the end of the week to make something deluxe. I had a package of pancake mix, and according to the box 1/4 cup of the pancake mix was only 180 calories. I was wondering what I could add to it to make it a little healthier.

One thing I thought of was pearl barley, but instead of making the pearl barley, I wondered if I could grind it up in my blender to make it into flour and add it into the pancake batter. 1/4 cup of pearl barley is 100 calories, but has a good amount of protein and 6 grams of fiber. I put the pearl barley in my blender and whirred away. I guess I didn’t really realize how hard those grains are! I was running out of time, so I just added the “flour” to the batter, added a little skim milk to make it the consistencey of pancake batter (a little over 1/4 of a cup). I also added a teaspoon of Nutella!

This made 3 HUGE pancakes for around 300 calories!

The result? I did like them, but all of the pearl barley didn’t quite get chopped up, so it had a little crunchy consistency, but to be honest, that didn’t turn me off at all, I actually liked the texture of it! I think next time I’ll blend it longer to make sure it all gets ground up.

My next experiment with pearl barley is to grind it up and add it to muffins for half the flour and see how that turns out.

Right now I am attempting to make “Artisan Bread in 5 minutes”. I belong to the Cooking Club of America and the latest magazine had the recipe in it. It makes 4 loaves, so right now its rising – we’ll see how it turns out.

The other day I clicked on an ad for The Chicago French Pastry School artisan bread making course. I thougth how awesome would that be? Ummm.. turns out the “Artisan Bread Making Course” is an 8 week, 5 day a week class and costs $10,500! I think for now, I’ll try it on my own!! Unless I win the lottery any time soon!!

And a few new blogs I found that I like:

Skinny Taste
Laylita
Circle-B-Kitchen

Have a good weekend! Check back to see if I mastered the Artisan Bread making!!!