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Bread Pancakes
2 CUPS SOUR MILK I EGG, BEATEN LIGHTLY FLOUR I TABLESPOON CREAM OR MELTED BUTTER 1/2 TEASPOON SALT I TEASPOON SODA Put milk in a bowl and break in enough bread to absorb it. Let stand over night. Mash bread fine, add sour milk, egg, cream, salt, and soda well mixed with a little flour. Then add sufficient flour to make batter of proper consistency.
A thrift pancake built on stale bread rather than a full measure of flour. The batter is deliberately loose and the quantities are left to judgment, so the two things worth getting right are the soak and the soda.
- Sour milk means buttermilkSour milk in this period was raw milk left to clabber, which turns tangy and thick. Today's pasteurized milk spoils rather than sours, so use cultured buttermilk. The acid is not optional: it is what reacts with the soda for lift.
- The bread quantityNo amount is given because it depends on the loaf. As a working figure, roughly 3 to 4 cups of torn stale bread, crusts included, per 2 cups of milk: enough that the bread swells and takes up nearly all the milk. Note that the recipe mentions milk twice, once for the soak and again at mixing, so how the 2 cups is meant to be divided is not clear from the text.
- Soak it coldSet the bread and buttermilk in the refrigerator overnight rather than leaving it on the counter. It softens just as well and there is no reason to hold dairy warm for eight hours.
- Add the soda lastA teaspoon of soda in an acid batter starts working immediately. Mix it with a little flour as directed, stir it in, and cook within a few minutes; a batter left to stand after the soda goes in bakes flat.
- Proper consistencyAim for a batter that falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon, a little looser than a standard flour pancake batter. Bread batters seem thin at first and continue to swell, so add flour a spoonful at a time.
- Griddle heatMedium, in the region of 350 to 375F on a griddle with a gauge. The recipe gives no heat, so judge by colour: bread pancakes can take on colour faster than plain wheat ones. Turn once bubbles hold on the surface.
- YieldDepends on how much bread and flour go in; somewhere between a dozen and twenty pancakes of four inches.
Bread pancakes belong to the long tradition of using up the loaf, which in a household baking its own bread was a weekly problem rather than an occasional one. Soaking stale crumb in soured milk overnight softens it completely and lets it stand in for a good share of the flour, and the same trick underlies bread puddings, panades and dressings. Sour milk and soda were a common leavening pair where baking powder was scarce or the milk was going off anyway.