Nothing went to waste during rationing of the Second World War and resourceful cooks found ways to use scraps, especially bread, and repurpose it into new meals. There’s a plethora of recipes using stale bread but I was especially excited to see bread pancakes!
I had never heard of bread pancakes until we started 1940s Days. And bread pancakes is a simple way to use stale bread to make something delicious for breakfast! These pancakes only use a handful of ingredients to make hearty, and filling pancakes to feed your hungry family! These delicious bread pancakes taste like regular pancakes except not as fluffy. We all enjoyed them – I would definitely make them again!
Let’s get started!
I have a bunch of bread and biscuits left from the week so I’m making bread pancakes!
Crumble up bread. Add sugar, baking powder and egg. Stir.
Add milk. Mush the bread up into the milk.
I added the remaining milk, but then it looked too milky, so I added more crumbs. Stir.
I added crumbs, mixed and let it sit a couple minutes until it looked like this.
Put lard or oil in the pan. Scoop into pan and spread out carefully. Cook until golden, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Flip and cook another 2 minutes, or until golden. Add lard again to the pan and continue cooking until batter is gone.
I added a bit of lard before adding the batter to each pancake because these like to stick to the pan!
Once I cooked a few, the batter became thicker. I definitely recommend letting the batter sit 10 minutes. This is what it looked like towards the end. It was much easier to scoop into the pan and a lot easier to flip the pancake.
Here are the pancakes. I made them large but you can make them smaller too if you like.
They look delicious!
We had our pancakes with Golden Roger’s Syrup, fresh whipped cream and sliced strawberries. These are best eaten hot and so good!
Bread Pancakes
4 cups crumbled stale bread, may need an extra 1 cup if batter is too loose or milky
1 egg
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1-1/4 cups milk
Combine crumbs, egg, sugar and baking powder. Stir. Add milk. Mash the bread to create a batter. Batter may be lumpy. Add a bit more crumbs if needed. Let sit 10 minutes. Add oil or lard to skillet. Heat, spoon batter into hot pan. Cook 1 to 2 minutes, flip and cook about 2 minutes or until golden. Continue cooking until batter is gone. Serve hot with your favorite pancake toppings.
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours