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Buckwheat Cakes
1 cup buckwheat 1/2 cup corn meal 1/2 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups boiling water 1/2 yeast cake Scald the corn meal and salt with the boiling water. Beat well and when cool add the flour and buckwheat, add dissolved yeast. Let stand over night, in the morning pour off discolored water that lies on top of batter and dilute with 1/2 cup of milk in which 1/4 teaspoon of soda is dissolved. Butter the griddle lightly and bake in small cakes quickly. Beat the batter and add more milk or soda if needed. A tablespoon of molasses may be added before cooking. Save a cup of batter to serve as yeast for the next day. The griddle for these cakes must be well greased.
An overnight raised batter rather than a baking-powder pancake, and the fermentation is the whole point: the soda in the morning milk is there to neutralize the acid the yeast has produced, not to leaven from scratch.
- Half a yeast cakeA yeast cake was compressed fresh yeast; the common small cake was about 0.6 oz, though sizes varied. Half of one is roughly 8 g fresh, or something under a teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. With a 12-hour rise at room temperature, err on the small side or the batter will be sour and slack by morning.
- Buckwheat"1 cup buckwheat" means buckwheat flour, not groats. Light buckwheat flour gives a milder cake; whole or dark buckwheat gives the grey, assertive flavor the book expects. It is gluten-free, which is why the wheat flour is there for structure.
- The liquid on top is normalThe dark layer that separates overnight is the same alcohol-and-acid liquid bakers call hooch on a sourdough starter. Pouring it off, as directed, mildly tames the sourness; stirring it back in keeps more of it.
- Soda in the milkDissolve the 1/4 teaspoon soda in the 1/2 cup milk before adding, then use the batter promptly. The lift comes from the carbon dioxide released as the soda meets the fermented batter, and it dissipates within minutes.
- Judging the batterIt should pour thick but level itself in the pan, about the consistency of heavy cream. Adjust with milk a tablespoon at a time. Extra soda should be added only if the batter tastes sharp; too much leaves a soapy, faintly metallic edge.
- Griddle heat"Bake quickly" means a hot griddle; the book gives no temperature, but the old test is a drop of water that skitters rather than sits. Buckwheat browns fast and can taste bitter if the pan is over-hot, so watch the first cake and adjust.
- Saving the starterThe reserved cup of batter, refrigerated, works as the next day's leaven; refresh it with the scalded cornmeal, flours and water and skip the added yeast. A batter crock kept going through the cold months is often described in period sources.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; after the reserved cup there is enough batter for a couple of dozen small cakes, depending on size. Molasses, if used, deepens the color and speeds browning.
Buckwheat cakes were a cold-weather staple across the northern United States, and the overnight yeast-raised batter is the older form: raised pancakes predate chemical leavening entirely, and the pinch of soda in the morning is a nineteenth-century graft onto a much older method. Buckwheat itself is not a wheat but the seed of a plant related to sorrel and rhubarb, valued by northern farmers because it matured fast on poor ground and could be sown late. Its appearance in a Gold Medal Flour promotional cookbook is instructive: the milling company's product is here in a supporting role, added for the gluten that buckwheat and cornmeal cannot supply, which is exactly the argument such books were written to make. The practice of holding back a cup of batter to leaven tomorrow's is the same economy as a bread sponge or a sourdough starter, and it is why these cakes were said to improve over the course of a winter.