Oh Seattle, when you repeatedly deliver us crap weather, you leave us no choice but stay home, listen to Dave Brubeck and make crêpes. However, last week’s sweet crepe won’t do; for a day like this, we’ll need something more substantive. Enter: buckwheat.

Buckwheat, which is in fact not really a wheat at all, yields a dark speckled flour which you may recall from Japanese soba noodles and blini. When added to crêpe batter, buckwheat produces a nutty, earthy and satisfying flavor that distinguishes the buckwheat crêpe from its less robust counterpart. Buckwheat crêpes, or galettes, are a specialty of Brittany, where they are used to house all sorts of savory fillings, most often of the ham/cheese/egg variety, but also of the béchamel/spinach/mushroom variety. Delicious. Especially with a bottle of hard cider. (PCC sells one from Normandy for 10 bucks.)

Buckwheat batter is just as simple as the sweet version and oh so versatile. Today we plan on warming up with a couple of crêpes slathered with our favorite tangy cider jelly; by lunchtime we should be ready to move onto the ham and cheese fillings. It’s going to be a great day.

The buckwheat crêpe recipe is after the break.

Buckwheat Crêpes

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 cup water
pinch of salt
2 pinches sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

This batter should be mixed up just like last week’s sweet crêpe batter. Again, it does need to rest, so we recommend getting up, mixing the batter and then crawling back in bed to read, sleep or try and wake your significant other with loud sighs and/or coughing fits.

Note: in this batter, the buckwheat flour tends to settle at the bottom, so as you cook your crêpes, it’s a good idea to stir the batter from time to time.