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Set Back, Sour Buckwheat Pancakes

List of Ingredients

Set Back, Sour Buckwheat Pancakes. Recipe Adapted by BJ Laube From
Melissa Nimon Johnston's Traditional Recipe. Winter 1999.
(1) In a two or three quart crock (or sauce pan) dissolve 1 cake (or
today one package of dry yeast) in 2 1/2 cups of warm water - hot water
will kill the yeast.
(2) Add ½ tsp of salt and 2 cups of buckwheat flour (not self-rising.)
(3) Gently blend with a spoon till smooth.
(4) Cover the crock with a cloth and let set overnight in a warm place
away from chilly drafts.
In the morning
Add 1 tsp. sugar and 1/2 tsp. baking soda in 1/4 cup warm water and
stir into the batter. The batter will be thinner than the usual
pancake batter. Before you start frying set aside 1 cup of the batter.
Fry in solid Crisco (grandma used lard.) The cake should be less than
a quarter of inch thick - closer to an eighth of an inch and about the
size of the plate upon which they are served.
In the evening add 1 pint of warm water to the cup of batter. This is
your starter. Repeat the above, eliminating the yeast, that is start
with step (2). It will take several days for the cakes to become sour.
After a few more days you may want to reduce the amount of set back
batter in the starter. This is the art.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Modern day recipes suggest setting the starter and feeding if for a week

or so before making the cakes - this involves discarding part of the
starter each day and adding fresh flour and other foods. My
grandmother was much too thrifty to have every have done this. No, we
ate the cakes as they became sour, day by day, until they were just
right.

Also modern recipes may add an egg. My grandmother sold her eggs. She
did not need such an expensive ingredient in her cakes. Also some
suggest the use of cooked mashed potatoes where yeast is considered
optional. Now this gets a little technical, also mysterious and arty.
You see bakers yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a yeast, and it does
not produce a sour taste. The sour taste comes from Lactobacillus
Acidophilus, or some similar natural occurring bacterial ferment.
Lactobacillus Acidophilus is present everywhere, in the flour, in the
potato, in unpasturized milk, and it soon takes over as the yeast uses
up the oxygen and dies out. Lactobacillus Acidophilus thrives in the
batter which now has little dissolved oxygen. Well grandma didn't know
anything about all that but she sure did know how to make wonderful sour

set back buckwheat cakes.




Recipe