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Dry Bread Pancakes (for Four Persons)
1 pint dry bread 1 pint milk or water 1 egg 1 cup sour mik ½ teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cream of tartar Pinch of salt Five Roses flour.
Soak the bread in the milk or water for one hour. Beat up well with a kitchen spoon. Beat in 1 egg and the sour milk.
Into this, sift a cup of flour into which have been mixed the soda, cream of tartar and salt. Add more flour, if necessary, to make a good pancake batter. Beat well. Bake on a hot greased griddle or frying pan. A good spoonful is enough for a cake. Serve hot with butter and syrup.
A thrift recipe that turns stale bread into breakfast. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the measures are by volume in a way that no longer reads clearly.
- A pint of dry breadThis is a volume measure of stale bread broken or torn into pieces, roughly 2 cups, which comes to about 4 oz of crumb. Crusts are fine; they soften in the soak.
- The soak is the whole pointAn hour in the milk or water lets the bread collapse completely. If it is still in lumps when you beat it, the pancakes will be patchy — push it through with the spoon or give it a few pulses with a stick blender.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured raw milk, acidic enough to react with the soda. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in, cup for cup; plain kefir or milk soured with a tablespoon of lemon juice also works.
- Soda and cream of tartarTogether these are simply homemade baking powder — ½ teaspoon soda with 1 teaspoon cream of tartar is close to 2 teaspoons of commercial double-acting powder. Whisk them thoroughly into the flour before it meets the batter, or you will get bitter pockets.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat all-purpose flour from the Lake of the Woods mill. Ordinary all-purpose flour is the equivalent; start with the cup called for and add by the spoonful.
- Batter consistency"A good pancake batter" here means thick enough to hold its shape as a spoonful on the griddle but still spreadable — thicker than a crêpe batter, looser than a drop scone. Bread batters stiffen as they stand, so judge it just before cooking.
- Griddle heatAbout 375F, or a pan where a drop of water skitters; the book says only 'hot'. Keep the heat moderate or the centres stay wet.
- YieldThe title promises four servings; the recipe gives no count of cakes and says only that a good spoonful is enough for each. Hold them in a 200F oven rather than stacking them, as bread pancakes go soggy under their own steam.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal as advertising for its flour, and like most milling-company books it was assembled largely from recipes sent in by customers. Dry bread pancakes belong to the older domestic economy in which stale bread was a resource rather than waste: the same household ledger that produced bread puddings, brown betties and panadas. The soda-and-cream-of-tartar leavening dates the method as much as anything; commercial baking powder was widely available by the book's day, though sour milk was always on hand in a house that kept a cow or bought unpasteurised milk that turned within a day or two.