Baking with buckwheat llour

Like Garrison Keillor's Powdermilk Biscuits, buckwheat flour is "tasty and expeditious." 

http://www.whiteleycreek.com/queen_of_the_meadow_bloom/road-

trips/page/7/

If your diet is not already high in fiber, it's a good idea to mix buckwheat flour into the flour you already use, adding more buckwheat and taking away more of the main flour over time. 

A good rule of thumb, in introducing buckwheat while baking for the family, is to use about 3 tablespoons of buckwheat flour per cup of regular or whole-wheat flour.  Over time, you can double the amount of buckwheat flour and remove 3 additional tablespoons of flour. (This mix is much milder than the 3/4 cup regular flour / 1/4 cup buckwheat flour often used for buckwheat pancakes.)

25-lb. bag for the serious buckwheat consumer.

BREAD

Buckwheat flours vary in fineness of grind and color. If the flour particles are too large for a recipe, the flour can be ground more finely at home using a coffee grinder. 

The color of the flour is another matter. The hulls of buckwheat kernels (groats) are blackish-brown, while the interior is much lighter, white or grayish-white. So if the buckwheat flour you buy is white, then the hulls have been sifted out of the flour and there will be less fiber and less distinctive buckwheat flavor. The darker the flour, the more hull has been included and the flour will have more roughage to it and will have that distinctive tang flavor that says "buckwheat."

Bread dough with buckwheat flour in it can scorch, so watch the top crust of each loaf so it doesn't burn.  Since buckwheat flour adds a strong flavor, buckwheat bread can handle sweeteners like sorghum or molasses. 

Here's a banana bread recipe which uses buckwheat flour. 

MUFFINS

Author Diane Scezny Greene ecommends grinding buckwheat flour as fine as possible before substituting it into her cake-like muffin recipe. (You could swap out all the regular flour or some portion of it.) She suggests serving the buckwheat muffins with spiced apple butter or furit purees which include a bit of cinnamon. 

  For those who enjoy corn muffins, these not only include some buckwheat flour as well, but they are blue because of the blueberries and the blue corn flour!

SCONES 

I'm surprised at how many buckwheat scone recipes I can find online!

I think this recipe looks especially good. 

COOKIES

In Japan, there's a cookie called a soba bouro (soba bolo) made from buckwheat

Here's a DIY video on how to make them.

Here's a recipe for thumbprint cookies with fruit filling.

These buckwheat cookies, I hear, have been an internet sensation. (They include cacao nibs, which are truly chocolatey, and which are nothing like carob chips.)

Happily for me, not carob!

BAKING MIXES

As buckwheat's popularity increases, it's easier to find cake mixes which include buckwheat flour in them -- usually in the gluten-free / special-diet area, but sometimes also in the health food aisle. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Some of the best information on this page comes from the book Whole Grain Baking by Diana Scesny Greenem, published by The Crossing Press, 1984.