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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes
These are made the same way as the preceding, except that sour milk is used instead of sweet, and one teaspoon of soda dissolved in one tablespoon of cold water takes the place of the baking bowder. a very BUCKWHEAT CAKES (Raised) - The following is reliable recipe for buckwheat cakes: One pint of buckwheat flour; one-half cup of Indian meal; one-half cup of yeast; or one-half cake of compressed yeast; one pint of warm water; one teaspoon of salt; one tablespoon of molasses. Beat the batter thoroughly, and place it where it will rise over night; it should rise and fall again by morning, when a teaspoon of finely powdered soda should be added; then stir well, and fry. If the cakes are desired three times a week, fresh yeast will not be required after the first making, if a little more than a pint of the batter is reserved each time in a cool place, and used instead of the yeast. Always put molasses in buckwheat cakes; it helps to give them a good color in frying.
BUCKWHEAT CAKES (With Baking Powder)-Mix thoroughly two cups of buckwheat flour, one of wheat flour, a little salt, and three teaspoons of baking powder; then add equal parts of milk and water till the batter is of the right consistency and stir free from lumps. A little molasses will help to brown them.
Three related batters, all leavened by acid meeting alkali. The first entry depends on a preceding recipe not reproduced here, but the substitution logic is the point and stands on its own.
- Sour milk means buttermilkSour milk -- Clabbered milk: raw milk left to sour naturally, tangy and thickened, and commonly used interchangeably with buttermilk in period baking. Modern pasteurized milk left out spoils rather than clabbers; use cultured buttermilk, or milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup.
- The soda-for-baking-powder swapOne teaspoon of soda is calibrated to the acid in roughly two cups of sour milk. Dissolving it in cold water first is worth doing, as it distributes evenly and prevents yellow-brown bitter specks in the finished cake.
- "Baking bowder"A typesetting slip in the original for baking powder. The preceding recipe is not reproduced here; period practice ran to roughly a teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour.
- Indian mealCornmeal; both white and yellow were sold, in varying grinds. It is there for texture and sweetness, not structure.
- Half a cup of yeastThis means liquid yeast or barm, a home-kept ferment, not anything sold today. For the overnight buckwheat batter use about 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast or 1 teaspoon active dry. Compressed yeast cakes varied in size, so half a cake is only approximate -- about a teaspoon of active dry will do.
- The overnight batter is a starterThe instruction to reserve a pint each time and use it in place of yeast is the hinge of the recipe. That reserved batter is a live buckwheat ferment; the original says only to keep it in a cool place, and assumes it is used again within a few days (the recipe imagines cakes three times a week). Left longer it will turn sharply acidic and sluggish; refrigerate it if you are not baking that often.
- The morning sodaAfter a night's fermentation the batter is quite acid, and the teaspoon of soda both neutralizes it and gives lift. Add it just before frying and cook promptly; the gas escapes within minutes.
- Griddle heatAbout 375F, or a surface where a drop of water skitters rather than sits. Buckwheat browns faster than wheat, so the molasses called for here will darken quickly at higher heat.
- YieldThe raised buckwheat batter, a pint of flour to a pint of water, makes roughly sixteen to eighteen cakes of four inches, enough for four people.
Buckwheat is not a wheat or even a grass but the seed of Fagopyrum esculentum, and it grows fast on thin, cold, acid soil, which made it a staple of northern New England, upstate New York and Pennsylvania where the winter breakfast cake was buckwheat rather than wheat. The overnight raised batter kept perpetually in a crock and topped up every few days was the older method, a domestic ferment of the same family as sourdough starter, and the parenthetical "(With Baking Powder)" version printed beside it shows the transition in progress: chemical leavening was cheap and reliable by 1911, and cooks were being offered the shortcut alongside the traditional pot. The molasses is doing exactly what the book says, helping give a good color. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued cookbooks as part of the same broad program of instruction for the American housekeeper.