A ploye is not a crepe. Nor is it a pancake. For one, you don’t flip it.
Seconds after being poured onto a hot, barely greased griddle, the surface of a ploye—a traditional Acadian buckwheat flatbread—will become pocked with hundreds of tiny, bursting bubbles. “Il fait des yeux, they call it in French,” says Father Paul Dumais, who serves as the chaplain of Saint Mary’s medical center in Lewiston, Maine. “they are making eyes [at you].” It’s a beautiful expression. The edges will brown and curl just slightly, and in just over a minute, the ploye is ready; the top still tender, the bottom golden.
The best ones, Dumais remembers, were those just off his grandmother’s spatula. “Mémé, as they say up north, might stand at the stove making them while everyone else ate. You’d fight for the ones that just came off the griddle, because that seared bottom is enviable.” Without a Mémé to cook them à la minute, a stack would be made and kept in a low oven until it was time to eat, much the way fresh tortillas are.
1 cup (225 ml) white buckwheat flour
1 cup (225 ml) regular flour
4 tsp (20 ml) baking powder
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
1-1/2 cups (350 ml) cold water
1/2 cup (125 ml) boiling water
Mix dry ingredients.
Add cold water and let stand for 10 minutes.
Add boiling water and drop to make thin 6" pancakes on hot griddle, 400 degrees I use ungreased cast iron fry pan or non-stick electric griddle, ungreased.
Bake on one side only, until bubbles break and pancake is firm.
Serve on warm platter.
©2016 Linda Sullivan-Simpson
The Past Whispers
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