Too Hot for Bread

Waffles

It has been too hot for bread over the last two weeks. The heat is ridiculous and I never want to turn on my oven. However, I have a bunch of sourdough starter languishing in the refridgerator. So I decided to make waffles.

Recently I've been on a big waffle kick. I started over the last 4 months or so making waffles on the weekends with my sourdough starter using a slightly modified version of this recipe from Wild Yeast. I usually half the recipe when I'm just making waffles for two people, but this time I doubled the recipe and made enough waffles to store in the freezer and toast whenever I wanted a nice crispy waffle. They are delicious!

Waffles on the Cooling Rack

Recipe for Sourdough Toaster Waffles:

1. Make sure your sourdough starter is viable but also that it is young and sweet smelling like overripe fruit. If it smells wine-y or vinigar-y, your waffles will taste like vinegar. If it is not young smelling, refresh it and leave it out on the counter for a few hours until it's ready.
2. Heat a waffle iron and grease it (I use a small amount of spray canola oil)
3. Follow the Wild Yeast pancake batter recipe (I put in 2 tbsp of honey instead of maple syrup and I made the waffles half with whole wheat starter). The batter should be slightly thinner than muffin batter but thicker than crepe batter. I usually have to add a couple of splashes of nonfat milk to achieve my desired consistency. If you want a large stash, double the recipe.
4. Ladle in enough batter for one waffle.
5. Cook until it is cooked through, but not until it is crispy.
6. Take out and let the waffle cool completely. Repeat this process until all of the batter is used up.
7. Place the cooled waffles in freezer bags (air tight) and remove all excess air from the bag.
8. Throw them in the freezer and stick them into your toaster as needed!

Bag of cooled waffles for the freezer

I have been really enjoying them. I'm planning on trying sourdough crumpets before the heat dies down.

The Holy Grail: Quick and Crispy Sourdough Waffles

Crispy Waffles

 These are delicious! I mentioned I've been looking for some sourdough waffle recipes that aren't too sour and not too unhealthy. I found it. This one uses no butter and is fantastic and it only takes a few minutes to make. For the recipe, see the Pancake Recipe on Wild Yeast. I exchanged the maple syrup for honey, I used a combination of white and whole wheat starter (about 50/50) and I added a tiny bit of skim milk in order to make the batter a little easier to spoon into the waffle maker. The waffles were extra crispy (although I changed the timing on them to make them that way--approximately doubling the time they were in the waffle maker) and I cut the waffle recipe in half. It made about 3 servings with the half recipe. Enjoy!

Note: 03/07/12: I made these as pancakes the other day as well. They were terrific. I hope everyone with a sourdough starter tries this recipe either as waffles or pancakes.

An Oberservation on Sourdough Waffles

I have made a couple of attempts at sourdough waffles over the past month. In the first one, I had a problem with my homemade buttermilk. But now, after trying this second batch, I think that the homemade buttermilk is only half of the problem. To try and avoid the issue of buttermilk, I tried this recipe (I set it up last night and made the waffles this morning). Like the last batch, these waffles had a strongly sour almost vinegary taste. I realized that the main problem is my starter because I did not have the same problem with my original batch of sourdough pancakes.

So, I realized that instead of using unfed "discard" starter (i.e. the starter I should discard before feeding in order to keep the wild yeast young and fresh), I should use young starter made in the manner of the Tartine Bread (i.e. a tablespoon of mature starter in a mix of flour and water let to mature until it smells like fruit and floats in water) or similar. I will try again!

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Buttermilk?

A week or so ago, I was really craving some waffles. So I set out a set of sourdough waffles from the King Arthur recipe to ferment overnight. One of the things required for sourdough waffles is buttermilk. I don't drink it or use it often enough to justify buying it. Although I would have gladly replaced it with milk, I know that there is something special about the acidity and the texture of buttermilk so I decided to try a tip I found and add lemon juice to it.

So, wanting to be health-conscious, I put some lemon juice in some skim milk. Unfortunately, it hardly curdled at all. So I decided to try the second tip and put in the vinegar. This worked great and the milk curdled as expected. Until the next morning.

When I woke up the next day and made myself some sourdough waffles they were really sour. I thought that it was strange, but I assumed for the first two bites that my sourdough culture had become oddly acidic. Then I realized that it wasn't sour, it was vinigar-y. With each bite, the waffle began to taste more like vinegar. Bleh.

So my warning is to beware of making your own buttermilk with vinegar. I've heard that one can buy buttermilk and freeze it in smaller bits so one does not have to use the whole thing before it expires. If anyone has some good tips, they would be much appreciated. For this particular recipe, I might even just try it with milk instead of buttermilk, or I might try this recipe instead.