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Easy Breakfast Board is simple and has all the family favorites on there. Using a pancake mix for both the pancakes and the waffles is an added bonus!

 

I’ve been playing with this board recipe for a while. I’m not the best at making boards. I think I’ve made one. Maybe two if you count that charcuterie buffet I made and the caramel apple board I made last year. 

 

This idea started as a brunch board. Then it was going to be a scone board. And now it’s an Easy Breakfast Board. Because it is super easy. Especially if you use the convenience items I used to make this board. Because no one should have to make all these items from scratch unless they really want to.

 

 

Where do biscuits come from?

 

The biscuits we know today in the States are way different than biscuits in other parts of the world. For some, it means cookies. Because biscuits originally consisted of a simple grain mixed with water to either preserve or provide sustenance.

 

Ancient Sumerians dried barley into these “biscuits” to preserve the barley for making beer. This method of combining a grain flour with water evolved through the ages. Soldiers ate biscuits as a source of food during war. People use them as the base of soups and stews, a method to freshen breath, and dunked into wine or tea as a treat.

 

 

However, the soft and fluffy biscuits we know today didn’t surface until some industrial inventions surfaced. The evolution of the flour meal helped create today’s biscuits. Prior to this, flour was expensive and only afforded by the rich. This combined with new chemical leavening agents meant change was in the near future.

 

Prior to baking soda entering the mass market, biscuits were yeast based. They called them beaten biscuits because, well, you beat them into submission! This allows the biscuits to cook up light and fluffy, but that took time and effort. Both things that were slowly dissipating as life evolved. As men went off to war, women had to step up and do more at home or go to work. This meant less time to bake up light and biscuits like these honey butter biscuits perfect for this easy breakfast board.

 

 

Where do pancakes come from?

 

Greece. A poet in ancient Greece mentions warm pancakes in one of his pieces of literature. The Greeks typically sweetened them with honey, but the English made theirs with spices, rosewater, apples, and even sherry.

 

Pancakes have their own day! Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Day. Shrove Tuesday is the feast day before Lent. Pancakes are a good way to use up eggs, butter, and dairy which are forbidden during Lent. But again, it wasn’t until baking powder surfaced did they really become the fluffy and delicious breakfast breads we know today.  Making your own pancake mix to whip up pancakes at any time is super easy.  And you can make pancake mix desserts or pancake mix muffins with it, too!

 

 

Where do waffles come from?

 

Also Greece. They cooked flat cakes between two hot plates. Yes. I know this is like the most base description of a waffle, but everything evolves from the most simplest form of the food.

 

Waffles and communion wafers have similar cooking methods. The wafer irons for communion wafers had religious images on it. Waffle irons had decorative designs or other Biblical scenes and were larger than the wafer irons.

 

The waffle iron as we know it surfaced in the 15h century. They changed from the circle to a rectangle. Even those that were round were cut down to rectangles, too. But that’s not the only thing that evolved. The recipe evolved as well. It started to include sugar and beer yeast. This creating the Brussels waffle (aka Belgian waffle) we know today.

 

 

The pilgrims made a brief stop in Holland. That’s where they found out about the deliciousness that is waffles. When Dutch immigrants arrived, they were thrilled to see waffles on the menu and made them even more popular. So much so that Thomas Jefferson started a mini waffle craze at the end of the 1700’s.

 

Again, inventions added to the popularity of the waffle. The first waffle irons were made of cast iron and made to use on an open fire. As more and more cities became industrialized, the need for an indoor way to make waffles arose and was created. But we had to wait until the early 1900’s for those inventions. And the waffle was still made with yeast.

 

 

How was baking soda invented?

 

Before that we have to talk about how baked goods became light and fluffy back in the day. There’s this thing called yeast. But yeast wasn’t always something you could purchase in a jar or a packet. It was something you had to create by allowing fruit, veggies, or grains to ferment.

 

And even then you weren’t guaranteed success in baking. That yeast could easily be killed by extreme changes in temperature. Or bacteria could contaminate and kill it. So, after days of creating the yeast, you could fail because it truly is a living creature to be taken care of delicately.  In order to make a cake it was truly a special occasion because of all the steps necessary from creating the yeast to proofing the dough and finally baking it.

 

 

Could you imagine? You want to bake a mini banana bread or a monkey bread recipe for your kids today and it takes maybe 5 minutes to prep the batter and 20 minutes to bake. Back in the day? We’re talking days to maybe a week.

 

Bakers couldn’t wait all that long for a cake and have it go awry because the yeast was finicky. They started experimenting with something called pearlash. Pearlash was made from lye and wood ashes and contained mainly potassium carbonate.  It’s also called bakers ammonia. But this was difficult and caustic to make. I remember using lye to make pickles with my mother once and she told me, rather strictly, to be careful with the lye because it could burn.

 

 

At the end of the 1800’s, baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) entered the market and was mass produced. This was missing piece of the puzzle for baking powder. Baking soda has to mix with an acid for the chemical reaction that causes leavening to happen. However, the ration of sour milk to baking soda wasn’t easy to lock down. Just because milk tastes sour, it could have different levels of acid in there you can’t taste.

 

How was baking powder invented?

 

The first baking powder was made with cream of tartar which is byproduct of wine making and very expensive at the time. Actually, it’s still sort of expensive in my honest opinion. It didn’t seem a viable option for mass marketing or even industrial uses.

 

But the need for a quicker leavener remained. And that involved chemistry. Including a chemist named Eben Norton Horsford. He created an acid compound that reacted with baking soda to create those CO2 bubbles we strive for in baked goods.

 

 

He had the brilliant idea of putting the two ingredients into one container. And to make sure that excess liquid wouldn’t prevent the chemical reaction from taking place he added in some cornstarch. And voila! Baking powder was born.

 

What’s in the Easy Breakfast Board?

 

All of this history to illustrate how the evolution of ingredients get us to where we are today with not just baking powder, but also premade mixes like pancake mix and muffin mix. Which are keys to this Easy Breakfast Board.

 

 

There are some delicious silver dollar pancakes made with a Krusteaz mix. And the same mix is used to make the waffle sticks, too. Both easily dippable in the maple syrup or caramel sauce! You make one batch of batter and then divide it in half. Add in some egg and oil to half of the batter for the waffles.

 

I also made the muffins with a Krusteaz mix. Their mixes are different than most. Most of the fruit muffin mixes have dried fruits in there. The Krusteaz has a can of blueberries in there. For me, that makes all the difference! They’re tender and not hard and potentially not hydrated by the time the muffins finish cooking.

 

The biscuits are made from scratch, but you could use a mix for those. Or even purchase frozen ones or those ready to make from a can. Just make whatever’s easiest for you. However, homemade biscuits don’t really take all that long to make. Just saying.

 

Breakfast Boards

• Bloody Mary Charcuterie Board from Cheese Curd In Paradise
• Easy Breakfast Board from A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
• Sweet and Savory Pancake Board from Magical Ingredients

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