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BUCKWHEAT CAKES (another way)
Put a large table-spoonful of yeast into a hollow made in the middle of one quart of buck-wheat flour, and work it into a light dough with warm water, cover it up warm by the fire to rise for three hours. When risen enough, the top will be cracked; then get ready the griddle--it should be hot, and well buttered or greased. The cakes may then be proceeded with. Convey with a ladle as much batter as may be wanted, according to the size of the cakes; when done on one side turn, and, when quite baked, butter them as they are removed from the griddle. A fresh supply of butter is required for every cake. Lay them one on the other and divide into quarters.
A yeast-raised buckwheat batter of the sort kept going for weeks in a stone crock on nineteenth-century breakfast tables. The original leaves the water quantity to judgement, so the consistency of the batter is the thing to get right.
- The hinge: batter consistencyAdd warm water gradually until the mixture pours thickly from a ladle, roughly the body of heavy cream. Buckwheat has no gluten to set a structure, so a stiff dough will not spread on the griddle and a thin one will run; the recipe says "light dough" but what you want is a slack batter.
- A quart of flourIf a US quart, that is 4 cups, about 17-18 oz (500 g) of buckwheat flour; Cassell's is a British book, and an imperial quart would be nearer 5 cups (about 600 g). Add warm water gradually, somewhere in the region of 2½ to 3½ cups, until it pours thickly.
- The yeastA tablespoon of yeast in a book of this period means liquid barm or brewer's yeast, or at a stretch crumbled compressed yeast. Substitute one packet (2¼ tsp) of active dry or instant yeast, which is ample for this quantity and this length of rise.
- Salt, which the recipe omitsBuckwheat is assertive but flat without seasoning. A teaspoon of salt worked in with the water suits it; molasses or brown sugar is often added in American versions of buckwheat cakes and tempers the bitterness.
- Rising time and temperature"warm by the fire" means a spot warmer than the room, perhaps around 80F. In a modern kitchen at 68-70F expect closer to four hours; alternatively set the batter the night before and leave it cool overnight, a common handling for batters of this kind. The cracked, bubbled surface is the signal, not the clock.
- Griddle heatThe recipe says only that the griddle should be hot; medium, in the region of 375F on a griddle thermometer, works. Buckwheat scorches faster than wheat.
- Greasing for every cakeThis is genuine, not fussiness: buckwheat batter sticks. On a well-seasoned cast-iron griddle or a nonstick pan a light wipe of butter between batches is enough.
- Yield and servingA quart of flour makes a large batch, well over a dozen cakes of 4 inches, depending on the size of the ladle. Stacking them buttered and cutting the pile into quarters is as the recipe directs; syrup or molasses goes over at the table.
Buckwheat is not a wheat and not a grass at all but the seed of Fagopyrum esculentum, a fast-growing plant that thrives on thin, acid soil and so became a staple of upland farms in northern Europe, Russia, Brittany and, above all, the northeastern United States. Yeast-raised buckwheat cakes were the great American winter breakfast of the nineteenth century, made from a crock of batter kept in a cool corner and replenished each night with fresh flour and water, so that the same sour sponge ran from autumn slaughtering to spring. Cassell's, compiled for a British readership, prints the method twice in slightly different forms, which suggests the editors were transmitting American practice rather than a dish their readers already knew; buckwheat in Britain was more often grown as pheasant feed than milled for the table. The recipe instructs that each cake be buttered as it leaves the griddle and the pile stacked before it is cut in quarters.