Our family—primarily Madame—loves waffles, and for me as a sourdough aficionado (huh, or geek) I like to turn all pastry and baked goods into sourdough versions.
Enter Food and Wine’s Yeasty Waffles recipe. Yes, this is an excellent recipe, and one worth making. However, it doesn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities when it comes to health. Thus I replaced all the all-purpose white flour with light spelt flour and added a spoonful of sourdough starter to the batter. The results were far better than the original, but with all the great qualities that made the original so good; the waffles are light and airy, crispy yet soft, and most importantly full of rich, nutty flavour and good nutrition (plus some extra fat…).
Try them out, and if you can’t get light spelt flour try a 50/50 combo of all-purpose flour and whole spelt or whole wheat.
- 1 ¾ cups milk
- ½ cup butter, melted
- 2 ¼ cups light spelt flour
- 2 tsp. instant yeast (use instant yeast so you don’t have to proof it first in water)
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp. honey or maple syrup
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 spoonful sourdough starter
- Strawberries or whatever fruit is local!
- Cream, whipped
- Combine all the ingredients (except the fruit and cream) in a large bowl and mix until a smooth batter develops. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Remove in the morning and stir the batter to deflate it a little. Adjust if necessary by adding extra flour or milk to achieve the desired consistency. Allow the batter to warm for 30-45 minutes (if you can wait!).
- Thanks to all the butter in the recipe the waffle iron shouldn’t need any greasing, but if you want you can grease the iron a bit. Fill the iron about ⅔ full with batter and close. Remove the waffle when it’s golden and crispy*. Adjust the amount of batter if the first waffle is too big or small.
- Serve hot, topping with fruit and whipped cream. Allow extra waffles to cool on a rack so they don’t get soggy and then freeze them for later (this is very useful for a quick snack for kiddos later).
*We use the Cuisinart Round Classic Waffle Maker, which we love, and set it at the 4th (out of 5) level of “done-ness.” It is also available from Amazon.ca.
I can’t get over how delicious strawberries are and how much I’ve enjoyed this past month of eating them. I also get a bit sad thinking about how soon they won’t be available (locally-grown at least, which is what counts).
Luckily as the first real fruit of summer they are followed by many more delicious fruits that will begin arriving soon. Our family is eager for blueberry picking, and then the stone fruit season, and ultimately apples and pears in the fall.
We ended up going picking three times this season. With the first two rounds we ate as many as we could, froze several gallons, and made jam. The last round of picking is happening as I write (I’m at home with our youngest who is napping while Madame and the young assistants pick), and the plan is to freeze a few more and have one last good week of eating.
Speaking of eating, besides the obvious method of simply eating the strawberries, they make an awesome salad addition.
They are also—and this is obvious too—excellent on waffles, especially overnight 100% spelt yeasted waffles!
We like to freeze tons of strawberries because they are so wonderful to eat all year long. For me they are an essential smoothie ingredient, but they also can be reheated and used as toppings for breakfasts and desserts!
To freeze strawberries and other fruits, arrange the washed and trimmed fruits (save the trimmings for use in a strawberry beer, recipe coming eventually) on a baking sheet and put them in the freezer. Once frozen put them in freezer bags, labeled with the date.
Recipes for jam abound and this year we tried one from my brother for strawberry rhubarb and one of my own invention for strawberry current, using frozen currants from last year that a friend had given us. We always use Pomona’s Natural Pectin, which locally can be found at health food stores and online can be found at Amazon (and you can buy it bulk there too, and save like 50%!). Here’s the basic recipe for the strawberry current jam:
- 4 cups strawberries, mashed (not pureed)
- 1 cup (frozen) currants
- ½ cup honey
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 tsp. pectin (we recommend Pomona’s Natural Pectin, available at health food stores)
- 2 tsp. calcium water (comes with Pomona’s)
- (secret extra ingredient for extra thick jam: a tiny amount of white chalk ground up)
- Sterilize canning jars by submerging them in a large canning pot and boiling them for at least 10 minutes. Do the same for the lids and jar rings.
- Mash the strawberries and add them to a large measure cup until you have 4 cups mashed. Mix in the currants and heat on the stove. While the fruit is heating mix the pectin with the sugar, and then mix in the honey. Add the calcium water and optional ground chalk* to the heating fruit.
- When it reaches a boil add the pectin-sugar-honey mixture and continue boiling for several minutes. Remove the sterilized jars and fill them to within a ½ inch of the top. Wipe the rim of the jar clean, put the lid on, and screw on the ring. Process the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes.
*Blackboard chalk is commonly made of chalk/limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO3) and/or gypsum (calcium sulfate, CaSO4·2H2O). Calcium is added to the jam because the type of pectin we are using needs it in order to form a gel. For whatever reason I seem to get better results with the chalk than with the calcium that is included in the package. It’s my secret method and it works! Plus gypsum seems to be safe for human consumption and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s such a tiny amount added that I figure there should be no problem.
Like most seasons, strawberry season happens once a year. (Thank you, Jon, for pointing out the obvious). Because of that around our house we feel the need to really cram the strawberries in. We have them at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We have them pretty much any time we pass through the kitchen. At breakfast they are usually on top of whatever we are eating, at lunch as a side, and at dinner they’re often part of a salad. I even attempted making a naturally carbonated strawberry pop, but rather failed—oh it carbonated all right, but the ale yeast that I used imparted a pretty beery flavor and nobody liked it, not even me. I’m not deterred, I’ll shall try again, but either with a truly natural fermentation source, like a ginger bug, or with a less flavorful yeast source, like a champagne yeast.
We made strawberry rhubarb jam and canned 4 quarts of it (yes, that’s a gallon). Madame made strawberry sticky buns. I made strawberry ice cream. We also froze 2 large gallon-size bags of them. Then we ate some more of them. And later I think we ate more. I will probably go eat some after I type this too.
And I guess that just like asparagus season, when this season ends we will feel satisfied as opposed to sad. Later we will miss the abundance but for the time being we have so stuffed ourselves that we will be happy to move onto the next special, once-a-year fruit or vegetable!
My other favorite food season so far…. Beets!
