I didn’t have the chance to visit 4000-year-old Otzi The Iceman, oldest mummy in Europe, at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, while I was in Italy. But I was amused to learn that the last meal he ate may have included a very rough version of pancakes, based on the highly-processed einkorn scientists found in his belly.
Pancakes, it seems, are one of the world’s longest-standing culinary creations. Stone Age pancakes may have been made of ground cattails, mixed with water and baked on hot rocks. The earliest known pancake in China, made of millet meal, dates back to the 4th century B.C. Ancient Greeks ate a version called kreion with honey. Native Americans made theirs of cornmeal. And from all of these far-flung origins there developed crepes, galettes and eventually, the pancakes we know today.
In my household, allegiances swing widely, from thin-battered crepes, to earthy buckwheat cakes, to fat and fluffy buttermilk pancakes. Sometimes a Saturday thing, they have the power to coax late-sleepers out of bed, and, nothing says “company brunch” more comfortingly. But as much as we like all of the above, our newest favorite is actually a gluten and sugar free pancake made of sweet rice flour called a crespelle. It’s a bit like a crepe, and includes milk and eggs in the batter, but no sugar. The texture reminds me of a blintz, with a satisfying bit of chew to it. Continue Reading…