Salted Buckwheat Brownies

It's tough to beat the classics.

There’s many ways to gauge the success of a kitchen project, but one I contemplate frequently is the relationship between effort and reward. For instance, a good layer cake with scratch-made fillings and swiss meringue buttercream, if executed well, is high reward, but it is also high effort. I still often find myself willing to take on such a project, but when ranking on this scale, it’s far from a top contender. A good brownie, however? Absolutely topping the charts — a perfect 10 in terms of the index between minimal effort and maximum reward. I can have it ready, start to finish, in 40 minutes, I often have all the necessary ingredients in my pantry, and it is so utterly cravable, I want to eat a second one the moment I finish the first.

This recipe is for my perfect brownie, which I stumbled upon more or less by accident. It’s based on a picture of a scrawled list in the notebook of a friend who copied it from a restaurant he worked at that took it from a cookbook whose name I’ve long since forgotten. Originally, it included rye flour, which is also lovely, but one late night in a desperate craving for chocolate long after the grocery store closed, I made a version substituting buckwheat for rye and adjusting the ratios of eggs, chocolate and cocoa powder to suit both what I had on hand and in what pan size I wanted to cook in, and it was the best brownie I ever made. Though I did it entirely off the cuff, mercifully, I was able to remember the steps and recreate it. Now, I can share it with you.