How Do You Make Your Pancakes?

Such a simple question, yet such a large outpouring of response over the pancakes. Americans do love to eat pancakes; it's the quintessential breakfast food in my opinion. I'll let you in on a little secret. I love McDonald's hotcakes and sausage. Yes, it's probably one of the more foul things you could ever put into your body, but they're so tasty, especially with that little packet of syrup they give you.

Pancakes are a weekend tradition in my family, and it has been that way since before my wife and I were married (shhhh!). Normally, we make the pancakes with Bisquick baking mix, but we've been known to make them from scratch. Alton Brown's recipe is pretty good. And recently, we've gotten to liking the cranberry johnnnycakes. In my humble opinion, they could easily be "just johnnycakes." No cranberries needed.

So 8% of you folks out there don't like pancakes. I'm not sure that's a real statistic or perhaps someone was just voting that way to be a jerk. I'm of the strong opiniong that there is a pancake out there for everyone. Whether it be from a box or from scratch, fruit inside or plain, fruit-topped or plain, hoecakes or johnnycakes ... a pancake is out there. You just have to find it.

I wasn't really surprised to find out that most people use a baking mix to do their pancakes. Bisquick is a staple in our pantry, and we use it to make many different things, like panckaes, waffles, biscuits, andshortbread. I was very happy to see that a lot of you like to do it from scratch. It's a little bit more work and a tad bit extra time, but the different can be wonderful. Making pancakes from scratch is the best way to get light and fluffy ones. The chemical reactions between the baking powder and soda are what make them fluffy and light.

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week's pancake poll. This week's Poll (a tad delayed) is about Gordon Ramsay, resident dictator on the television program Hell's Kitchen. Let me know what you think.