MarthaJeanne's Culinary Conundrums

Last night we had bought pumpkin Cream of Pumpkin soup for dinner. I decided to add blinis to the meal, and finally found a recipe that let me make lovely buckwheat pancakes raised with yeast. However my search also turned up lots (and lots) of recipes that called for just white wheat flour with baking powder and/or soda. So my question is what makes those 'blini'?

In case you are wondering, they were lovely last night, and even reheated today. I am used to whole wheat/spelt in my baking and did not find that the buckwheat flour tasted that different, so I'm wondering why so many recipes that made a big deal out of the buckwheat diluted it with regular white flour. One thing I could have done differently would have been to let the batter rise longer. Even in a 30° oven for about an hour, it got bubbly, but didn't rise much. But it was suppertime, and I was hungry. Beating the egg whites separately certainly made the results fluffy enough.

If I still entertained, it would be tempting to decide that I need a special cast iron pan with small circular places to shape appetizer sized ones.

Buckwheat flour is a traditional ingredient in many pancake recipes. In recent centuries, however, white flour has become more available than whole grain flours, possibly less costly, and can be stored on the shelf vs. refrigerator. White flour also has a longer shelf life than whole grain flours. When I have more time I will look for my macrobiotic recipes that use whole buckwheat flour. (Our very old refrigerator + our dryer recently stopped working, so after several hectic days of storing refrigerator items on ice, our new machines got delivered + installed ... now to clean and refrigerate all surviving foods.)

We have gotten a new freezer and a new refrigerator after failures this year, so I can empathise. You'd think that if it ran without problems for twenty years or so, it could just keep running for a few more.

Wikipedia says the type of flour isn't a consideration in what gets called blini.

My understanding is that traditionally blini are made with buckwheat flour and raised with yeast. However, often small savory pancakes with some amount of buckwheat are called blini.