These whole wheat pancakes are light, fluffy and delicious! Jump to the Whole Wheat Pancakes Recipe or watch our quick video showing you how we make them.
Not too long ago, we shared our essential pancakes recipe. It’s simple and makes extra light and fluffy pancakes. Since it uses all-purpose flour, we became curious to see what would happen if we replaced some or all of that flour with whole wheat flour. After a few tries, we realized it works beautifully.
– This Recipe is Sponsored by Gold Medal Flour –
Need More Breakfast Ideas? Try One of These:
Our Essential Pancakes Recipe is so easy and is practically no-fail. In our recipe, we share extra tips for make the best pancakes at home.
Our Spiced Buttermilk Banana Pancakes are delicious and so popular. We add buttermilk, warm cinnamon and nutmeg as wells as mashed bananas.
If you are in the mood for waffles, try our Essential Waffle Recipe. It’s just as simple as our pancakes and takes advantage of our best tips for making waffles that are tender on the inside and crispy on the outside.
How to Make Light and Fluffy Pancakes with Whole Wheat Flour
If you’re looking for whole wheat pancakes with 100% whole wheat flour, this one will do it for you.
With all whole wheat, the pancakes are quite fluffy and taste great. We absolutely love the nutty flavor of the flour.
You can also use half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour. If you’re not used to using whole wheat flour in your kitchen, we suggest you use 50% whole wheat and 50% all-purpose flour.
In fact, even though we’re used to whole wheat ourselves, we prefer using two flours instead of only using whole wheat. The pancakes are a little lighter, fluffy and taste great. Either way, they turn out beautifully. Just look at how fluffy they are!
We love topping whole wheat pancakes with some warm syrup and sliced bananas, but we’re sure you already have a plan for the topping. Enjoy!
Disclosure: This recipe has been shared in partnership with Gold Medal Flour. We’re pretty excited about it because it’s been our flour of choice for quite some time (my Mom’s, too). This recipe is part of an ongoing relationship with Gold Medal. Last month, we shared our Fluffy Pumpkin Pancakes with Butter Pecan Topping.
Recipe updated, originally posted November 2013. Since posting this in 2013, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear and added a quick recipe video. – Adam and Joanne
Easy, Delicious Whole Wheat Pancakes Recipe
- PREP
Whole wheat flour makes pancakes taste nutty and delicious. This recipe is quite flexible. We love using a combination of whole wheat and all-purpose flour. The pancakes are lovely, light and fluffy. For 100% whole wheat pancakes, simply use all (1 1/2 cups) whole wheat flour and no all-purpose flour. We have noticed that whole wheat flour absorbs liquid a little more than all-purpose flour. Because of this, you might find that you need to add a little extra milk to the pancake batter before cooking the pancakes.
You Will Need
3/4 cup (100 grams) whole wheat flour
3/4 cup (100 grams) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups (295 to 350 ml) reduced fat milk, dairy or non-dairy
1 large egg
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more for skillet or substitute coconut oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Directions
- Make Batter
- Cook Pancakes
Whisk flours, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and the salt in a medium bowl, set aside. Warm the milk until lukewarm, not hot (you should be able to keep your finger submerged for 10 seconds). Whisk milk, butter, egg and the vanilla together until blended.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Pour milk mixture into the well and stir with a fork until mixed and only small clumps of flour remain. Do not over mix batter. Note: The batter will be quite thick. If it is unreasonably thick, add 1 to 2 tablespoons more milk to thin it out a little.
Heat a large skillet (or use griddle) over medium heat. The pan is ready if when you splatter a little water onto the pan surface, the water dances around the pan and eventually evaporates.
Lightly brush skillet with melted butter. Spoon a 1/4-cup of the batter onto the skillet and gently spread into a 4-inch circle. (If the batter is thick, you may need to use the back of a spoon to spread the batter into a circle).
When edges look dry and bubbles start to appear and pop on the top surfaces of the pancakes, turn over, about 2 minutes. Once flipped, cook 1 to 2 minutes or until lightly browned and cooked in the middle. Serve warm with syrup, bananas or other toppings.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- We use kosher salt. If you don’t have it on hand, keep this in mind: 1 teaspoon fine sea or table salt = about 1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA Supertracker recipe calculator to calculate approximate values.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
Excellent recipe – yummy dairy free version. I replaced the butter with vegan/non dairy margarine and the milk with coconut milk. 1 1/2 Cup whole wheat flour and 1 1/2 Cup Coconut milk. The pancakes were light and fluffy. I ran out of all purpose flour and only had whole wheat in my pantry. I had a craving for pancakes this morning. Did a search for a whole wheat recipe and this came up.
Great pancake recipe! Instead of 2 different flours, I used Bobs Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour as it is sort of halfway between regular whole wheat and all purpose flour. Also used almond milk. These turned out great! Light and tasty. Thanks for an excellent recipe.
I’ve been searching for a delicious simple whole wheat pancake recipe for the last few weeks…just tried yours yesterday & absolutely perfect!!! However, I did add mini chocolate chips to one batch & fresh blueberries to another…going to freeze some up!! Thank you for sharing & posting that helpful video too!!
I made these pancakes with all whole white wheat flour. These may be one of my favorite pancake recipes ever. My husband and I are known for making wonderful homemade pancakes. We recently started trying to eliminate white flour from her diet so I was looking for a good whole wheat pancake. Many of them are just too heavy to enjoy but this one is just perfection. The smell and taste of these pancakes is reminiscent of an oatmeal cookie. There’s just a Nutty sweetness to it that made these delicious. My older daughter does not like pancakes but I asked her to try these and she said that she actually would like to eat some of these. They are remarkably Airy and light and rise up wonderfully. The second time I made these I omitted one tablespoon of sugar and it made no difference in the flavor or the browning or the rise of the pancake so next time I think I’m going to try to leave all of the sugar out. These also soak up the syrup super fast so there’s plenty of maple sugar tea flavor so I don’t see the need for the sugar if it doesn’t affect the batter. I did have to check the weight on the side of my bag because the grams listed on this recipe don’t match the grams on my bag of flour. I made my pancakes with one cup by weight which was not 100 grams. The one cup was based on the weight on the side of the bag I had and they were perfect. Hands down the best whole wheat pancake I’ve ever had