There’s something about buckwheat pancakes that hearkens to an earlier time—pioneer days, log cabins, pot belly stoves, and all that. Perhaps it’s because buckwheat used to be a lot more popular a hundred years ago (according to Wikipedia, 20x the acreage cultivated in 1918 than today). In spite of the name, there is no “wheat” in buckwheat. It’s not even a grain or grass. Yet in many ways it behaves like wheat, and its flour produces wonderfully, unexpectedly, fluffy pancakes, with a rich, warm, earthy taste. We experimented quite a bit with this recipe, including an egg, excluding an egg, all buckwheat flour, or half buckwheat, half all-purpose flour, and you know what? It’s all good. My favorite combination includes an egg and uses half white flour and half buckwheat flour. But the combos without the egg or with all buckwheat flour were also fluffy, flavorful, and eat-way-too-many-able. Buckwheat has zero gluten in it, so if you are at all gluten-sensitive, you shouldn’t have a problem with buckwheat (just use all buckwheat flour instead of the mix in the following recipe.) Griddle’s on!

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