The ployes came out better this time

My second batch of ployes (Acadian buckwheat pancakes) came out better. I used a nonstick pan with a thicker bottom, which might have helped me managed the temperature. I didn't thin the batter as much this time, and I made each pancake larger. 

I prefer a savory ploye to treating it like a breakfast pancake, so even though it's morning, I'm enjoying my ployes with hummus. The buckwheat cake is not unlike a soft pita or that Ethiopian bread served to scoop from the communal platter, so it works. 

Of interest to buckwheat growers

This site lets you register your garden or yard or community garden plot as a place where bee-friendly crops like buckwheat are grown. 

The Ploye Project, Day One. I used the brochure which came with my gift set of regular and wholewheat mix bags of ploye flour. 
 

The ploye "flour" is not just the buckwheat, but it includes baking powder and salt. The baking powder must be what gives the buckwheat pan bread the bubbly texture. 

The brochure which came with the package told me to mix the mix and water in a ratio of 1 to 1, then to add another 1/3 cup or so of water to the batter after it had sat for about five minutes. 

The instructions said that ploye would stick if the pan wasn't hot enough. I started out with a cast iron skillet with a thin coat of vegetable oil in it. It was plenty hot (the oil smoked) but the ploye stuck anyway. So i switched to the pancake griddle and that worked better. 

I made the batter thin and I liked the result of that. But I could also tell I'd never made ployes before. On the blog page I made for this site which has buckwheat recipes from around the world, there's a link to a YouTube video where a woman demonstrates her mother's method of making ployes. I'm going to watch that in detail and follow the instructions on the video and see if my second batch is a little better.

But I got the bubbles on the underside of the pancake, so I'll give myself points for that. 

Backpacking with buckwheat

This person on YouTube does a demo on cooking buckwheat porridge over a protable camp stove. It's a nice how-to without either verbal instructions or canned instructional-video music -- just lovely bird songs.


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Of course there's pumpkin spice buckwheat. . .

. . .because there's pumpkin spice everything, right? 

Here's the recipe. There's actual pumpkin in it, which is a nice touch. 


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Week -by-week development of buckwheat crop

Cornell University has a nnice chart showing the stages of development in a crop of buckwheat. 

There's also some good basic info on the Cornell site about what helps/hurts the plants' growth.

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Is my buckwheat too pooped to pop?

SPILLED KERNELS

I've seen several articles online about making buckwheat popcorn. This one seemed promising, so I tried to do what the author did. And my buckwheat kernels didn't do anything but sit there in the hot pan. 

I don't believe every single how-to thing I read on the internet, but in this case, I do believe
I used ten kernels for the first test, in a nonstick pan. I tried ten more kernels ina metal pan. In both cases, I got the pan hot enough for a drop of water to sizzle, but not so hot that the pan smoked. The first time, using the nonstick pan, it's possible that I should have waited a little longer to add the kernels. Maybe it doesn't work if the kernels roast a bit while the pan heats? But the second pan was definitely hot when I added the kernels. It was starting to smoke a little so I turned the burner down a bit, and I also dropped in a few drops of water to make sure they'd sizzle and evaporate. And they did. 

So I have set aside the twenty kernels from the first two tests, and tomorrow I think I'll try a few kernels from another bag of buckwheat I bought from a different seller. And maybe a few kernels from this year's buckwheat crop here at home. 

I believe this author popped the buckwheat, along with other grains which were also given the pop test. I did learn from looking at the photos that it was regular unhulled buckwheat and not the hulled groats. I wasn't sure on that so I appreciated having that information.

I like the idea of buckwheat popcorn. I have read articles by experienced poppers that they get a fair number of "duds." Still worth doing, I think. I'm also wondering if I killed the buckwheat kernels in the hot pans. I may try germinating them to see. I'll report back on that and on a pop test for the other two buckwheat selections. 
  
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Source for photos:  https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/how-cook-any-whole-grain-popcorn.html