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Pancakes

It is hard to wrap your wits around the fact that the venerable pancake is a bread.

Examination of stone age tools, dating back 25-30 thousand years ago, show bits of ground wheat grain. Since there were no ovens or pans, any wheat based food would have to be eaten raw, boiled in bark bowls, or cooked on flat hot rocks.

Bread is basically ground wheat or other grain such as rye or maize as invented by the Mayans of South America. But for the early humans of Europe, it was primarily wheat grain that was used; add water to make a paste, add a bit of salt if available, flatten it and fry it on the hot rock and there you have bread. What they may have called it is anyone's guess but for us, it is bread.

These flat cakes were the first hot cakes. Many years later add a bit of  baking power and another bit of Baking Soda; mix it into a batter and the modern hot cake is born. The pan, in pancake comes with the iron age and the making of pans and other utensils. Pancake batter contains both baking powder and baking soda, the key to making light and fluffy and somewhat thick pancakes is to lightly mix the batter and let it sit for about ten minutes before spooning it out onto the hot pan. This gives the leavening time to infiltrate the batter and you can see the batter rise slightly.

Beer Bread

During the late middle ages in London, the water was so polluted that beer was used almost universally as a substitute. Beer was also used to replace water in making bread and beer bread was born. It is still in use today.

The alcohol is almost all evaporated off by the time it gets to the table to be served up with dinner.

Open a can of your favorite beer (If your beer is unfiltered and yeast is still present in a cloudy coloring you won't have to add yeast to your dough) and let it sit overnight and go flat. It will give you much added flavor in the finished product.

Dad.