“Buckwheat cakes have had a strong part in American cookery for the last 150 to 200 years, epitomizing the hearty fare of country life.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread
Because he humors me, Mike agreed to another breakfast-for-supper night and we made Yeast Buckwheat Cakes tonight.
Here are the ingredients:
Beard, foolishly assuming that you’re going to have your Yeast Buckwheat Cakes for breakfast, tells you to mix the flour, salt, water, and yeast together the night before. I mixed them together before I left for work, and let the mixture ferment all day. When it was time for dinner, I added the baking soda, molasses, and melted butter.
My pancake-pouring technique is improving–many of my buckwheat cakes were impressively round.
This recipe makes a lot of pancakes (the picture above is only about one-third of the batch). Beard claims it yields “about 20 small pancakes.” To me, 5 inches in diameter is not a “small” pancake. Keeping in mind how sick I got from eating almost an entire batch of Yeast Griddle Cakes, I paced myself. It was difficult, because Yeast Buckwheat Cakes are fabulous. The buckwheat flour provides a nutty, savory flavor, and there is a hint of sourdough from the fermenting process. Since I wanted to be thorough, I tried one with butter, one with strawberry jam, and one with maple syrup. And then another one with maple syrup, and another, and another…and they were all delicious.
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What is Buckwheat?