Comment from Cabal
Time: March 2, 2010, 1:52 pm

Sarrasin (buckwheat) is a rough grain that was used instead of wheat. It was much cheaper. Brittany (not Normandy) is the place where crêpes came from. Crêpes seem to have been eaten in Brittany for a very long time, it is the easiest flour product to make (flour, water, salt) and you don’t need yeast which in a poor land is all to the best.
Brittany was a very poor area, with poor land and acid soil, and buckwheat was easier to grow. When the Crusaders came back with buckwheat it spread all around France, but it took a century for it to be used in the crêpes. The sarrasin crêpes were used like bread (main food of the French peasants) in the countryside, wheat was used by richer people and in the towns. They were even dried and kept in the cellar in case of hungry times, when they would be used to thicken the soup. The use of wheat crêpes (froment) for desert started around the beginning of the 20th century, when sugar, jam and such became less expensive. Buckwheat crêpes are still used to eat salted things as the taste goes well with that.

And if it is for your French class here are a few French sites with history of the crêpes (dry and hard) and galettes (supple) from which I took the information above. Crêpe is the generic name for both kind.
http://cookingland.free.fr/dossier/crepegalettes.htm
http://crepeman.ifrance.com/historique.htm