Saturday, November 26, 2011

Buckwheat Crepes Recipe

Buckwheat crepe rolled up with some spreads
I like bread. I like crepes. I like starchy foods. I like things that I can use to wipe up some shmear, whether hummus, eggplant salad, tuna salad, or whatever, and I find that since going gluten free, its hard for me to find good, easy recipes that don't use a million expensive ingredients.
I got this recipe from my friend, Butter, over at Hunger and Thirst for Life, and it's a terrific one (only she didn't provide exact amounts). Its a crepe recipe and you can use them as you would tortillas, you can use them to make stuffed crepes (either sweet or savory), you can toast them in the oven after frying to make chips, and you can use them as I do, just to spread with yummy dips and other sandwich fixings.
The best thing about this recipe is that it doesn't call for any gluten free flours, which generally are very expensive to buy, hard to find, or requiring a grain grinder (or lots of patience) to grind at home, and this one is made with the whole grain. The worst thing about this recipe is that you need to prepare it in advance; its not something you can throw together last minute.

Buckwheat Crepes Recipe

Ingredients:
2 cups raw buckwheat (toasted buckwheat- kasha- won't work for this)
3 cups water and 1.25 cup water
3 eggs

1-2 tsp salt
Oil

Instructions:
1. Soak buckwheat in 3 cups of water overnight.

2. In the morning, strain the buckwheat, saving the soaking liquid.

3. Put the buckwheat in the food processor with a quarter cup of water. Blend until you get a smooth paste with no lumps. If it doesn't blend easily, add another quarter cup or so.

4. Once all the buckwheat is blended up into a paste, add the rest of the reserved soaking water and blend.

5. Add the eggs and salt and other water.

6. Lightly oil your frying pan and bring to a medium heat. You don't want too much oil or it'll be a problem; too little oil and your crepes will stick. I generally rub my oil with a cloth napkin to spread it around but make sure there's no puddle of oil on the pan.

7. Pour 1/4- 1/2 a cup of crepe batter onto the pan and then swirl the pan around so the crepe batter covers the bottom surface of the pan. You want the layer of crepe batter to be very thin; if it's too thick, use less crepe batter next time.

8. Cook until the sides of the crepe start pulling away from the sides of the pan and curling up a bit. When this happens, slide a spatula under the crepe, flip over, and cook for 20 more seconds or so, then remove from pan.

9. Repeat with the rest of the crepes. If the crepes start sticking to the bottom of the pan, oil again.

Enjoy!

This will make a very large batch; this recipe freezes well for use at later points. These crepes are very flexible and don't break easily at all, fortunately, almost as if they were made with gluten.
Platter of homemade crepes

I took all my broken crepes from my failed crepes, toasted them in the oven, and ground them to make a gluten free bread crumb.

Note that you need a good non stick frying pan for this. If your non stick coating (whether teflon or cast iron seasoning) isn't top quality, then this will likely flop. Just warning you. (I had to borrow my friend's frying pan to make my crepes for this picture session because my large frying pan was causing the crepes to rip. That's why the crepes are so small; because her frying pan was a very small size.)

If you're not gluten free, here's a recipe for regular crepes made with wheat flour.

Do you ever make crepes? How do you usually use them? What do you fill them with?
Have you ever made buckwheat crepes? What do you think of them?


Linking up to Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Monday Mangia, Fat Tuesday, Gluten Free Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday, What's Cooking WednesdaySimple Lives Thursday

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