Blini (Yeast-Raised Buckwheat Pancakes)

Variations

• All wheat: leave the buckwheat out and they come out paler and milder. This is now the more common version in Russian homes, and the yeast stays.
• Oladyi (оладьи): the same batter dropped thicker in small rounds. If blini are thin and folded, oladyi are thick and eaten with a fork.
• Blinchiki (блинчики): thin, unleavened, filled and rolled or folded. These are much closer to a crepe, and because the name is a diminutive of blini the two get confused constantly.
• What goes on them: savoury is soured cream, smoked salmon, herring, caviar, fried mushrooms or chopped egg; sweet is jam, honey or curd cheese. Putting both on the table at once is normal.
• Maslenitsa: the week before Lent is Blini Week, and the dish comes out of using up eggs and dairy before the fast. The round shape is usually explained as the sun.
• How they differ from pancakes and waffles: those use baking powder — gas starts the moment the batter is mixed, so you mix and cook. Blini use yeast, which costs two hours before any cooking and repays it in acid and fermentation flavour rather than gas alone (fermentation basics).
• Against Irish soda bread: that one adds acid to react with a base; blini make acid and use it as flavour. The same acid is the means in one and the result in the other.
• What they are served with: the same table as borscht, pelmeni or beef stroganoff — soured cream belongs to all four.

Tips

• Yeast is not here only to make them rise. Baking powder would do that. What yeast gives is two hours of acid and fermentation flavour, and that is what stands up to soured cream, smoked fish and caviar. Cut the time and you have made buckwheat pancakes.
• Milk at 35°C. Hotter kills the yeast, colder takes hours. A drop on the back of your hand should feel like nothing at all (dairy and heat).
• Buckwheat alone will not work. It has no gluten, so there is no net to hold the gas the yeast makes. Half wheat flour is what keeps the rise (choosing flour, dough and gluten).
• Do not stir the risen batter. Knocking out two hours of gas with one stir is the commonest mistake. Lift ladlefuls off gently and leave the rest alone.
• Whites last, folded. This adds mechanical bubbles on top of the biological ones. Stir them in and you lose both at once (cooking eggs).
• The first one is the test one. It tells you the pan temperature, the butter and the batter consistency. True of every pancake, and more annoying here because the batter took two hours.
• Do not spread them crepe-thin. The point of a blin is that it rose, and paper-thin hides it. Fix one ladleful to the size of your pan and keep it consistent.
• Butter between the layers. Stacked bare, they steam themselves into a single mass. Butter keeps a film between them and stops them drying (butter).
• Keep the plate covered. Cooking twenty of them means the first ones sit and stiffen; a plate over the top holds them soft in their own steam (serving temperature).
• Put something savoury and something sweet out together. Soured cream and jam side by side is the Russian way, and it makes one batch into two dishes.
• Do not keep leftover batter for the next day. It over-ferments sour and the gas is gone. Cook the lot instead and freeze the pancakes, then reheat them in a pan (reviving leftovers).