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Buckwheat Cakes
1/3 cup fine bread crumbs 2 cups scalded milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 yeast cake 1/2 cup lukewarm water 1 3/4 cups buckwheat flour 1 tablespoon molasses Pour milk over crumbs, and soak thirty minutes; add salt, yeast cake dissolved in lukewarm water, and buckwheat to make a batter thin enough to pour. Let rise over night; in the morning, stir well, add molasses, one-fourth teaspoon soda dissolved in one-fourth cup lukewarm water, and cook same as griddle-cakes. Save enough batter to raise another mixing, instead of using yeast cake; it will require one-half cup.
An overnight buckwheat batter of the sort that once lived permanently in a covered crock by the stove. The hinge is the morning soda: the batter ferments sour overnight, and the soda both neutralizes that acid and gives the lift that makes the cakes light.
- Yeast cakeCompressed fresh yeast was sold in small blocks (the familiar later standard was 0.6 oz), so a quarter cake is on the order of a few grams. Substitute roughly 1/2 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast, dissolved in the lukewarm water as directed.
- Soda is missing from the ingredient listThe quantity appears only in the method: one-fourth teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in one-fourth cup lukewarm water. Add it just before cooking, not the night before, or it will be spent by morning.
- Overnight rise"Let rise over night" assumes a cool kitchen rather than a heated modern one. In a warm room the batter may over-sour and slacken; give it a cool corner, or the refrigerator for the last few hours.
- Buckwheat flourBuckwheat carries more fat than white wheat flour and goes rancid comparatively quickly. Buy it fresh, smell it before using, and store it in the freezer. Light buckwheat flour gives a milder cake than the dark whole-groat kind.
- Batter consistencyThe 1 3/4 cups given is a guide; the instruction to add "buckwheat to make a batter thin enough to pour" governs. Aim for something that ribbons off the spoon, thinner than a pancake batter, and expect to loosen it slightly in the morning.
- Griddle heatCook on a moderately hot, lightly greased griddle. These cakes brown quickly, so turn them when the surface bubbles set and the edges dull.
- Keeping the batter goingThe half cup of reserved batter works as a starter for the next mixing, as the recipe directs, and can be kept going for a run of mornings if refrigerated and fed. Start again with fresh yeast if it smells sharply of solvent rather than of clean sourness.
- YieldAbout sixteen to eighteen cakes of four inches, enough for four people.