Sourdough Belgian Waffles

Would you like to know a little secret? Never in my life have I ever made waffles.

Until This morning.

For some reason they intimidated me. Something about that waffle iron made me think it wanted to screw with me. Make my waffles stick. Burn me. Laugh at me as I wrestled the waffles out of the grids.

I just looked like an evil little appliance.

Until I started wishing I could have Belgian waffles at home.

Then one lovely, fine day...I won a gift certificate for CSNStores.com from Michelle's blog....Bigblackdogs.net and ordered myself a super nice Presto Flip Side Belgian Waffle Maker. This thing rocks! Btw, if you've never been to Big Black Dogs, you're really missing out. Great recipes. Fantastic photos and just an all around super nice lady. I really have learned a lot from Michelle.

Actually.....Michelle was instrumental in my decision to dive into the world of sourdough. Michelle hosts HBin5 and it was one of the HBin5 members (Mary J) who offered to share an e-book about sourdough starters and bread. If anyone is interested in the Northwest Sourdough e-book, You can purchase the e-books (for a modest price...and I highly recommend each book. Soooo worth every penny) from http://www.northwestsourdough.com/discovering/

I began my sourdough started a little over two weeks ago (March 26th to be exact). I shared my daily experiences on my facebook fan page (if you wanna take a peak....Peaceful Cooking on Facebook)

Today, my starter looked like this

I have a loaf of sourdough bread rising on the counter at this very moment. I'll be giving more details about my starter and how my first loaf turns out later on this week. In the mean time, I had enough starter to not only make the bread and keep the starter going....but I had enough to make a stack of Sourdough Waffles.

Sourdough Waffles (adapted from Northwest Sourdough)
Printable Version
makes 4 Belgian waffles

1 cup sourdough starter (166% hydration recommended)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon barley malt syrup
1/4 cup melted butter, cooled slightly (or 1/4 cup neutrally flavored oil)
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder

In a large bowl, combine the sourdough starter, water, milk, eggs, malt syrup and butter. In a small bowl, combine your dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

 If the batter is too thick, add a little water, keeping in mind that the batter needs to be on the thin side (so I'm told....I'm not the expert here by any means. Remember....this is my first time ever making these things).

Heat your waffle iron and do whatever it is you're suppose to do with whichever waffle iron you happen have. If you have heat settings on yours (mine doesn't)....set it on high.

My waffle iron doesn't have settings. What it does have is a nifty little timer. It took about 4 minutes (or until the steam subsided) and poof....I was removing my waffle with ease. No fuss...no muss. And what a beautiful, fat little waffle it was....

 I did it! I had conquered my fear of the evil waffle appliance!

And....I made something from my sourdough starter!!

Aaaaand....it was easy. As a matter of fact, as I was standing there waiting to remove my next waffle...I was thinking to myself...'This is so much easier than pancakes!'

So what was I afraid of?

Ooooh ya....this...

The melt down. The overload. The mess.  Oh well...it's bound to happen. And it's really not all that bad. Way worth the results. And still much easier than pancakes. Seriously...if that's the only mess I end up with....that's nothing compared to all the drips and drizzles across the counter and stove when I make pancakes.

Now that I have a stack of these beauties, what would you put on them?

 Sure...I could totally go for the strawberries and whipped cream.

But I happen to have a thing for peanut butter and maple syrup.....