Not Eggs Or Toast: Cowboys Ate This Old-Fashioned Breakfast On The Trail

When cowboys weren't at "home, home on the range," they were traveling for long stretches of time — and a hard day's work begins with a proper breakfast. According to cowboy Kent Rollins, a traditional cattle drive breakfast consisted of coffee, beans, and biscuits (sometimes bacon or salt pork). Breakfast started early, often around four or five in the morning, which meant the ranch cook had to wake up even earlier to complete their chores and have the meal ready. On special days, that morning meal might have featured sourdough pancakes.

Compared to hoecakes, pancakes offer denser fuel for a long day of physical labor. Unlike the grit of cornmeal johnnycakes, sourdough pancakes feature a fluffier texture akin to buttermilk pancakes, yet with a more dimensional, sweet-tangy flavor from the fermented sourdough. Since sourdough starter, a tart base for many baked goods (like cowboy pancake batter), requires a lukewarm holding temperature to ferment and become bubbly, it would have made an ideal candidate for cooking and baking on the trail.

For traveling cowboys, perishable ingredients like milk, eggs, and butter would quickly spoil, but could be obtained on special occasions when passing through towns. So rare were baked goods, in fact, that cowboys were known to travel miles for a taste of bear signs — a forerunner of the modern donut and the classic cowboy dessert. Nowadays, modern ranchmen use ice-filled coolers to transport dairy, meat, and veggies during times of travel. Stored on ice, the elements can stay cool for several days.

To make a range-worthy sourdough starter, flour and water get mixed together in a glass, steel, or crockery container, then left to sit. On the trail, cowboys were even known to add peeled, diced potatoes to their starters. Over a period of days, portions of the starter are removed from the container to make room, and the starter is freshly fed by mixing more water and flour into the batch. The process is repeated until the bubbly mixture begins routinely doubling in size between feedings. For more specific directions, feel free to take a cue from our foolproof sourdough starter recipe.

Foodies craving a taste of Southwestern cultural history should keep in mind sourdough starter can take up to one or two weeks to become developed enough to bake with; be sure to whip up that base ingredient well in advance. Factors from the type of flour used to the weather outside can influence its rate of fermentation. 

To transform sourdough starter into cowboy pancakes, whisk it into a batter with eggs, oil, sugar, baking soda, salt, vanilla, and flour. Then, simply fry the batter into pancakes in a buttered cast iron skillet. To complete the meal ranch-style, pair those sourdough pancakes with a smoky, rugged cup of cowboy coffee, and serve 'em with butter and dark, pure maple syrup.