Frozen mini pancakes – Store versus homemade

My kids love pancakes, I am more than happy to make them from scratch on the weekends but on the busy school mornings the frozen variety is our only option.  This past weekend, we had quite a bit of extra pancake batter so decided to take a stab at making some of my own frozen pancakes.

As you may think, cooking these are pretty self explanatory.  The only thing you need to remember is to keep the pancakes a uniform size (1 inch diameter seems like a good target) otherwise you could end up with some cold or very hot pancakes when you reheat depending on the size.

 

I then placed the pancakes into a freezer bag ad left them in the refrigerator unsealed for a couple hours with the idea of getting their core temperature down while also letting some of the moisture leave so when freezing I do not end up with a large frozen pancake blob. 

Last I spread out the frozen pancakes with as few layers as possible to avoid too many pancakes from sticking together.

Once frozen, take 6-7 mini pancakes and place on the outside edge of a plate and microwave for 60 seconds.

The Contender – Store Bought

The competition: Krusteaz Miniature Pancakes - 15 Oz, $2.50 for 12 frozen mini pancakes.

Ingredients: Water, Enriched Bleached Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folate), Whey, Sugar, Dextrose, Soy Flour, Canola or Soybean Oil (Contributes Trivial Amount of Trans Fat), Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Salt, Artificial Butter Flavor (Contains Dairy), Palmitate (Vitamin A), Niacin, Vitamin B12, Pyridoxine (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin, Thiamin Hydrochloride, Reduced Iron, Folate, Soy Lecithin, Eggs.

The Challenger - Homemade

I am planning on buying some buttermilk and making pancakes from scratch, but this time I was limited to good old “Baking Mix”

Here are the costs of making the pancakes yourself:

Ingredient	Amount	Cost
Baking Mix	1 cup	$ 0.289
Milk	1/2 cup	$ 0.093
Egg	1 egg	$ 0.133
Vegetable Oil	1 teaspoon	$ 0.009
Electricity	Stove (15 minutes)	$ 0.003

So for only $ 0.53 you can make your own frozen mini pancakes.  Now there is a little effort in cracking an egg and mixing and cooking for a few minutes but for 20% of the price this is pretty low effort, even better if you just make a little extra when making fresh pancakes.

The Decision…

	Store bought	Homemade
Price
Taste
Difficulty

The price was not even close here and according to my kids (who tried them out this morning before school) the homemade ones tasted much better.  So yet again homemade is the winner

Making your own frozen bread dough

The preparation of bread can be quite time consuming, with our current busy schedules it can be impossible to have the time to prepare bread dough from scratch as frequently as you want.  To help with this I normally make twice as much dough as I need and freeze the rest.  The process to make this successful is pretty easy but I will walk through it quickly.

First prepare your favorite bread dough recipe as you normally would (mixing, kneading, rising, etc)  After the first time the bread has risen take the bread you want to freeze and knead and separate into equal sized balls.

One thing I like to do is to simply take these and place them into individual sandwich bags and push out any excess air.

 

Then add these bags to a larger freezer bag and remove individual bags when you have an inkling for some fresh baked bread.  One other option is to create several one inch balls and add to single layer within a freezer bag.  These can be defrosted and used to make fresh baked rolls

Baking bread with frozen bread dough

Take the frozen bread dough and place into a greased bread pan.  Spray top of frozen bread dough and top with plastic wrap.  Let the bread dough defrost and rise (6 – 8 hours) and then remove the plastic wrap and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees and enjoy.