Home › Bread › Bread Griddle Cakes
Bread Griddle Cakes
1 cup flour 2 eggs 2 teaspoons baking powder Pour milk on to bread crumbs and let stand several hours. Add dry ingredients, mixed and sifted, yolks and whites beaten separately, and cook as Griddle Cakes. 1 cup cooked rice 1 cup milk scalded 1½ cups flour 2 eggs
A thrift recipe that turns stale bread into breakfast. The method is the whole recipe: the crumbs must be fully softened before anything else happens, or the cakes cook up gritty.
- Soak the crumbs properlyDry crumbs from stale bread need several hours in milk to dissolve into a smooth pulp; overnight in the refrigerator is easier and no worse. Beat the soaked mass with a fork or whisk until no distinct crumbs remain before the flour goes in.
- Crumb and milk quantitiesThe proportion of crumbs to milk is not stated here, and the balance is left to the cook. Aim for roughly 1 cup fine dry crumbs to 1 cup milk, then thin with more milk after mixing until the batter drops thickly from the spoon rather than pouring.
- Beaten whites"Yolks and whites beaten separately" means whipping the whites to soft peaks and folding them in last. This is the only lift the cakes get besides the baking powder, so fold gently and cook the batter promptly instead of letting it sit.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to a cup of flour is a generous rate; modern pancake batters usually run about 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons per cup, and the heavy soaked crumbs justify the higher figure here. Double-acting powder works, sifted with the flour as directed.
- SeasoningNo salt or sugar appears in the list as printed. A half teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar improve browning and flavor without changing the character of the cakes.
- "Cook as Griddle Cakes"A griddle or heavy skillet at medium heat, lightly greased; the cakes are ready to turn when the surface loses its gloss and the edges set. Cook the first cake as a test to judge heat.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield, and with the crumb and milk quantities missing any count is a guess; expect roughly two to four servings.
Bread griddle cakes belong to the large family of nineteenth-century recipes built around the stale loaf, which careful households generally tried not to waste: crumbs went into puddings, stuffings, brown betties, and batters like this one. Soaking crumbs in milk until they collapse gives a cake with a softer, more custardy interior than a straight flour pancake, and it stretches an expensive cup of flour with something already paid for. Lowney's book, issued by the Boston chocolate firm to promote its cocoa and chocolate, otherwise leans toward sweets, but it follows the standard domestic-science pattern of the era, where a griddle cake recipe was expected to appear in several variations, each substituting one economical starch for another.