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B. F. Griddle Cakes
1½ cups breakfast food 1 cup sifted Five Roses flour 2 eggs 1 cake compressed yeast 2 cups milk (scalded and cooled) 2 tablespoons brown sugar or molasses 1 teaspoon salt.
Dissolve yeast and sugar (or molasses) in lukewarm milk. Cool and add flour, well-beaten eggs, breakfast cereal, salt, and beat until smooth. Cover and set aside to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, or until light. Stir well. Bake on hot griddle.
If wanted for over-night, use cake yeast and an extra half teaspoon salt.
Cover and keep in cool place. See other griddle cake recipes on page 51.
A yeast-raised griddle cake built on leftover cooked breakfast cereal — the sort of batter that was mixed the night before and poured at dawn. Two things need translating: what "breakfast food" was, and what a cake of yeast weighed.
- "Breakfast food" / "breakfast cereal"This most likely means cooked porridge — rolled oats, cracked wheat, oatmeal, farina or cornmeal mush, already boiled and cooled. Use 1½ cups of cooked cereal rather than dry flakes, which would absorb far too much of the milk.
- Compressed yeastOne cake was about 0.6 oz of fresh yeast. Substitute one 2¼-teaspoon packet of active dry or instant yeast; the rise will be comparable.
- Milk temperature is the hingeThe instructions are out of order as printed. Scald the milk, cool it to lukewarm (100–110F), then dissolve the yeast and sugar in it. Yeast dropped into hot milk is dead yeast and the batter will never lighten.
- Scalding is now optionalScalding was needed to kill enzymes and bacteria in raw milk. With pasteurized milk you can simply warm it to lukewarm and proceed.
- Stir, do not re-beatAfter the hour's rise the batter is full of gas. "Stir well" is best read as knocking it down and evening it out rather than beating it hard again.
- The overnight methodThe extra half teaspoon of salt slows fermentation for a long cold rise. A "cool place" then meant an unheated pantry or cellar, warmer than a modern refrigerator, so allow the batter 30–45 minutes at room temperature in the morning before baking.
- Griddle heatAim for 375F, or a griddle where a drop of water skitters rather than sits. Watch the first cake and adjust down if it colours too fast.
- YieldThe recipe makes roughly 16 to 18 cakes of about 4 inches — four modest breakfast servings.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and Winnipeg to promote its Five Roses flour. This one turns on using up what a household already had: the "B. F." of the title is breakfast food, and the whole point is that yesterday's pot of porridge becomes today's griddle cakes rather than going to waste. Yeast-raised griddle cakes were the older tradition in North America, commonly kept going from a batter jar or "starter" saved between batches. A recipe like this, offering both a one-hour rise and an overnight version with extra salt to slow it, catches the moment when the yeast batter was still the familiar breakfast but the cook expected to be able to choose her schedule.