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Wheat Griddle Cakes
1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 2 tablespoonfuls light brown sugar 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted 1 cup lukewarm water 2 cup sifted flour 2 eggs 1 teaspoonful salt A PLATE of "wheats" is a breakfast treat any season of the year. Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm liquid. Add lard or butter, then flour gradually, the eggs well beaten, and salt. Beat thoroughly until batter is smooth.
Cover and set aside for about one hour, in a warm place, free from draught, to rise. When light, stir well and bake on hot griddle. If wanted for over night, use one-fourth cake of yeast and an extra half teaspoonful salt. Cover and keep in a cool place.
NOTE:- All batter cakes are better baked on an ungreased griddle, as they keep their shape and do not follow the grease. You will be rid of the disagreeable smoke and odor of burning fat. Your griddle need not necessarily be of soapstone. If you have an old griddle and clean it thoroughly, being sure to remove all burned fat or batter, it can be used in the above way.
Pancakes raised with yeast instead of baking powder: a thin batter set to rise for an hour, then stirred down and cooked on a griddle. The long note about grease is the most useful thing on the page.
- The ungreased griddleThe booklet is right, with one condition. Batter cooked on a dry surface spreads less, keeps a round edge and does not chase the fat around the pan, and nothing burns or smokes. This works only on a surface that releases: well-seasoned cast iron, the soapstone the book mentions, or a modern nonstick pan. On bare stainless, or on an iron griddle with old burnt fat still on it, the cakes weld themselves down. That is why the note insists on cleaning the griddle thoroughly first.
- These are not baking powder pancakesAn hour of fermentation gives a flavor closer to bread than to a quick batter: faintly sour, deeper, less sweet, with a chewier edge and a more open middle. Cakes that taste frankly of yeast have usually not gone long enough rather than too long.
- Give the bowl roomTwo cups of liquid, two cups of flour and two beaten eggs make a thin batter that foams hard as it rises. Use a bowl at least twice the volume of the batter and cover it. Filled near the rim it will climb out and onto the counter.
- The overnight version in a modern kitchenA quarter cake is about half a teaspoon of active dry yeast. The “cool place” the book has in mind is a larder or an unheated pantry, which is a good deal warmer than a refrigerator. Left in a modern fridge the batter will be sluggish by morning, so bring it out an hour before breakfast to finish rising at room temperature.
- Testing the griddleNo heat is given. Flick a few drops of water onto the dry griddle: they should skitter and vanish within a second or two. Drops that sit and steam mean the pan is too cool, and the cakes will come out pale and tough. Drops that spit and disappear on contact mean it is too hot for a batter carrying this much sugar.
A yeast-raised griddle cake is the older form of the dish. Pancakes lifted by a leavening powder were a nineteenth-century arrival, once saleratus and then baking powder put chemical rise within reach of any kitchen, and they spread quickly because they abolished the waiting. This page is a quiet defense of the thing they displaced, which is what the company printing it would want. The quotation marks around “wheats” are worth noticing as well: the booklet reaches for a familiar shorthand, naming the cakes by their grain the way a short-order counter would, and uses it to sell an hour’s rise at home.