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B. F. Waffles
Lake of the Woods Breakfast Food makes delectable waffles by substituting 1½ cups of the cereal for the 2 cups of Five Roses flour in the ordinary waffle recipe given on page 52. Mix with cold water.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it swaps the flour in the book's basic waffle batter for the mill's own breakfast cereal. Everything depends on the recipe it points back to, and on how a coarse cereal behaves next to flour.
- What "B. F." meansIt stands for Breakfast Food, the Lake of the Woods Milling Company's own cereal, sold alongside Five Roses flour. As the product of a wheat mill it was presumably a wheat cereal rather than a rolled oat one; a fine or medium wheat cereal is the nearest current stand-in.
- The substitution ratioOne and a half cups of cereal replaces two cups of flour. The recipe gives no reason for the reduction; a coarse wheat cereal measures and absorbs differently from flour, which may be why less of it goes in.
- Let the batter standThe recipe gives no resting time, but coarse wheat particles need time to soften if the waffles are not to come out gritty; a rest before baking is worth trying, and the batter will thicken as it sits.
- Keep the rest of the recipeOnly the flour is being replaced; whatever eggs, fat, salt and leavening the page-52 batter calls for stay as written. The leavening likely matters more here, since a coarse cereal develops less structure than flour.
- "Mix with cold water"The instruction implies a change from the liquid used in the page-52 batter, probably milk. Expect a plainer, less rich waffle than the flour version.
- ConsistencyNo consistency is specified. Since the cereal keeps absorbing liquid, you may need a splash more water before baking.
- The ironWaffle irons of this period were generally cast iron, set over a range burner and turned by hand. On an electric iron, give these a little longer than a flour waffle; the batter is slower to set.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, and pages like this one are the reason it exists: a recipe collection that doubles as a catalogue for the mill's products. Five Roses flour was the flagship, but the company also sold a wheat breakfast cereal, and a short note showing that the cereal could stand in for flour in a waffle batter quietly widens its usefulness in the household. Milled breakfast cereals were a growth industry in North America around the turn of the twentieth century, and millers with an established flour brand were well placed to sell them. It is reasonable to suppose that the habit of cooking with the breakfast cereal — in waffles, muffins, puddings — suited a maker's interests, partly as thrift and partly because a box of cereal that has more than one use gets bought again sooner.