Pure Buckwheat Blini

History

Blini — thin leavened pancakes — are among the oldest dishes in the Russian repertoire, with a history reaching back to the Middle Ages, roughly a thousand years. Molokhovets does not invent them but codifies a folk tradition: her blini section runs to dozens of numbered variants — buckwheat, wheat, half-and-half, and lean 'postnye' Lenten versions — and No. 1654, the 'purely buckwheat' blin, is the archetype: a yeast batter of buckwheat flour raised for five or six hours, scalded with hot milk, and lightened with beaten egg whites, in the yeasted manner Russian cooks had used for generations. Buckwheat was the classic grain, and the round, golden cake was read in folk tradition as an image of the sun. That symbolism binds blini to Maslenitsa ('Butter Week'), the festival of the last week before Great Lent — the eighth week before Orthodox Pascha — described as among the oldest surviving Slavic holidays and as a pre-Christian sun celebration the Church absorbed rather than suppressed, letting blini become the emblem of pre-Lenten indulgence before the long fast set butter and dairy aside. Blini carried a solemn role too, eaten at funerals and in commemoration of the dead. Served, as Molokhovets directs, with butter, sour cream, and caviar, the buckwheat blin is everyday food and calendar ritual at once.

Ingredients

• glasses buckwheat flour
• glasses warm milk or water
• tbsp melted butter
• egg yolks
• zolotnik dry yeast
• spoonful salt
• spoonful sugar
• glasses hot milk or water (to scald)
• egg whites (optional)

Instructions

1. Set a sponge 5-6 hours ahead: 4 glasses buckwheat flour, 3 glasses warm milk or water, 1 tbsp melted butter, 2 yolks, 3-6 zolotnik dry yeast; beat well.
2. When risen, beat again, add 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar, scald with 1 1/2-2 glasses hot milk or water, beat; optionally fold in 2 whipped whites.
3. Let rise; without further stirring, carefully transfer the batter and bake by the spoonful as in the note.