We’ve loved and enjoyed traditional German Apple Pancakes for years now, and it’s always been a staple in our meal planning rotation.  For recipes to try out, just Google ‘Apple Pancakes’ or ‘German Apple Pancakes’ which is where our recipe’s derived from, and you’ll have many to choose from.  Recently, I’ve decided to cut out wheat from my diet, and because oats are heart-healthy, I experimented as to whether I could substitute oat flour for wheat flour when making these delicious treats.

In my experience so far, oat flour is heavier than wheat flour measure for measure, and doesn’t substitute well in any baked goods that need to rise very high – like cakes.  However, apple pancakes don’t need to rise much, so I figured it would be a good candidate to try switching flours.  My wife made her pancakes over the past two days in the traditional way using wheat flour, and I made mine with oat flour.

I pulse oats in a food processor to make my own oat flour these days, and while it’s not as finely ground as the store-bought version, it’s worked well for me so far.  Another aspect of oat flour, is that it absorbs a lot of water per volume, so the longer you wait to use the batter, the thicker it’ll get.  It also means you may need to tweak the recipe a bit when substituting flours, as initially the batter seems too thin when using oat flour alone, but in time it’ll thicken up.  The tendency is to initially add extra oat flour to the mixture, so you may need to experiment to get the right oat flour ratio for whatever you’re making.

Yesterday’s attempt at making apple pancakes with oat flour turned out less than ideal, because oat flour doesn’t bind well to other ingredients in some cases.  My full-size oat flour apple pancake was too large and thick to successfully flip in the pan, and I needed two spatulas and some creative food arrangement to make the pancake appear to be in one piece after cooking.  So today, I decided to make smaller pancakes, and the process worked out just fine.

When cooking or baking with oat flour, you’ll get a heavy ‘oatmeal’ taste and texture, but if like me, you want to switch flours and experiment, the flavor of these oat flour apple pancakes was quite acceptable.  Instead of a light and flavorful traditional apple pancake, the oat flour version was heavy and very hearty – maple syrup would have gone well with these oat cake alternatives – and they’ll fill you up.  So if you enjoy eating oats and oatmeal like I do and want to switch from wheat flour, this is a possibility for you to try ~ enjoy! ☼ 🙂