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Breakfast Cakes
In the morning take the dough of a pint of flour. Beat two eggs light and mix them with a half pint of milk, then add these ingredients to the dough, let it stand an hour to rise, and then bake as buckwheat cakes.--Mrs. Dr. J.
A thrifty morning cake built on bread dough held over from the day before, thinned into a batter and cooked on a griddle. The recipe assumes you already have risen dough in the house.
- "The dough of a pint of flour"This means a piece of ordinary yeast bread dough made with about a pint of flour, i.e. roughly 2 cups, 8 to 9 oz, plus its water, salt and yeast. Cut off a fist-sized lump of any lean white bread dough after its first rise, or set a sponge the night before with 2 cups flour, 1 cup water and a quarter teaspoon of instant yeast.
- Liquid measureA half pint is 1 cup of milk. Combined with two eggs and the dough, this makes a thick pourable batter rather than a dough; add milk a spoonful at a time if it stays stiff.
- Beating the eggs lightWith no chemical leavening here, the recipe leans on the yeast in the dough, and the beaten eggs add what air they can. Whisk them until pale and foamy before they go into the milk.
- Mixing dough into liquidCold, stiff dough will not disperse if you pour milk over it. Tear the dough into small pieces and work the milk in gradually, or beat it in a stand mixer with the paddle until smooth.
- The hour's riseAn hour at ordinary room temperature is right for a warm kitchen. In a cool modern one, the batter may need 90 minutes; it is ready when the surface is domed and bubbled and it smells faintly of yeast.
- "Bake as buckwheat cakes"Griddle cakes, not oven baking. A lightly greased griddle over medium heat (about 375F on an adjustable one), a ladle per cake, turned once when the bubbles at the edges set and stop closing over, roughly 2 minutes a side.
- Salt and sweeteningThe recipe relies on the bread dough for salt and adds no sugar. If your dough is unsalted, add half a teaspoon; a teaspoon of sugar will help the cakes colour.
- YieldAbout twelve to sixteen cakes of 3 to 4 inches, enough for four at breakfast. The batter does not hold well once risen, so cook it out in one go.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and half-named Virginia housekeepers, is full of recipes like this one: short, addressed to someone who already knows the technique, and organised around what a kitchen would have on hand at daybreak. Before commercial baking powder was cheap and universal, a household that baked its own bread had a standing source of leaven, and using a piece of yesterday's dough to raise the morning's cakes was simply good management. The instruction to "bake as buckwheat cakes" is a period shorthand: buckwheat cakes were among the commonest American breakfast griddle cakes of the nineteenth century, often raised overnight with yeast or a saved batter starter rather than with soda, and the contributor could assume her readers knew what the griddle should be doing. The signature "Mrs. Dr. J." reflects the book's habit of crediting contributors by initial and by their husbands' titles, a convention that keeps many of them anonymous to us now.