You can make pancakes from a mix, or you can make it from ingredients. Ingredients like flour, which has eight ingredients of its own, such as wheat. Making wheat will take about 17 weeks, unfortunately, and you'll need eggs, for which you'll need a chicken. Getting that chicken up to speed will take about 40 weeks. Recursive Recipies, by @yakczar, lets you dial in your exact level of interest in the ecology your food comes from.
A recursive recipe is one where ingredients in the recipe can be replaced by another recipe. The more ingredients you replace, the more that the recipe is made truly from scratch.
I contemplated my place in the universe, then left the Recursive Recipes website and ordered thirty pounds of Bisquik from Amazon.