Grandma's buttermilk sourdough pancakes

I wish a had a picture of the pancakes my grandma used to make. She lived in a village with barely any electricity, and no running water or sewer system. The water was taken from a well in the yard, and the bathroom was an outhouse behind the barn. It was "rough"living, at least my mom recalls it being rough growing up there. I can certainly see how it probably was. But for kids it was glorious! We visited for a few weeks every summer in childhood until grandma passed away, around the time I was 10. Grandma did have a tiny fridge, and a gas stove but rarely used those. She mostly used her giant brick oven. In this brick oven she cooked the best pancakes I have ever tasted! She used to make them big too, probably 9"-10" we'd put one on the soup bowl and put a generous pad of butter in the center then run it all around till it melted and created a puddle of melted butter in the center. Then we'd tear off chunk of this delicious pancake dip them in the butter and enjoy. I so wish I had a picture of that.

For years my mom and her sisters tried to replicate the recipe, no one had it or thought to get it form Grandma before she passed. No one ever got even close! They all wrote it off on the lack of the big brick oven. Alas I think the problem was they didn't use sourdough starter. I started using sourdough starter 2 years ago and just randomly my mom mentioned that grandma used to have some bubbly mixture she kept going that she kept on a shelf in the brick oven, and she added this bubbly mixture to the pancakes. I figured it had to have been sourdough, test drove a recipe and what do you know, it tastes like grandma's pancakes!

The recipe I've come up with is rather basic, no eggs or oil/butter involved which works out great for those days when I'm low on ingredients. This batch is quite large but these freeze well and reheat well in the toaster. Anyways here it goes!

2 cups sourdough starter straight out of the fridge
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups flour
1.5 Tsp baking soda
1 Tsp. salt
3Tbsp. sugar (more if you like your pancakes sweet, I prefer mind pretty neutral)
Mix sourdough, buttermilk, sugar, salt and baking soda together. Stir in the flour and let the batter rest for at least 20 mins.

I cook them on cast iron over low heat, but proceed as you normal would with any other pancake. Enjoy!