Saturday, May 22, 2010

Hungry.

Hi friends!

I'm finally starting to wake up. It took me a while. But what can I say? Sleep is delicious when you can get it. But this new found wakefulness is going hand in hand with something else: hunger.

Curiously, that hunger has been paired with disinterest in cooking. Not a particularly fruitful combination, for well, me, the hungry one. But that is starting to change. Whew.

My cravings go two ways these days: flavorful and highly spiced food of the Asian, Indian and Mexican varieties for now. Don't you dare come near me with your saltines and plain water. You hear? My other food venture is all about breakfast foods anytime of the day. We've prepared breakfast for dinner more times than I care to share and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. Here's the thing: I'm more of a savory and the other two around the table are more often sweets when it comes to breakfast. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the sweets, but most of the time I don't want to feel like I just had dessert for a meal. Shocking! I expect my female card to be revoked any second now.

Except this all changed when I was catching up on the ole trusty Google Reader and stumbled upon this post. All of a sudden, in that cliche pregnancy craving way, I needed waffles. But alas, a week or so flew by before I could throw the recipe together the night before. That was the beauty of one of the recipes. Most of the work was done the night before and yeah, that totally appeals to me. And I never had yeast waffles before. I was intrigued.

When morning came upon us, I was a little concerned. The batter, well, it kinda smelled like beer. I didn't know how this was going to work out, but I put my faith in the recipe. And oh.my.goodness. We have a winner, folks. Where has this recipe been all my life? It has totally revived my poor, forgotten waffle iron. These even won over those sweet people at my breakfast table. This is by no means a sweet waffle and yes, The Boss wasn't a fan without the jam or syrup, but the rest of us, we were all about it. Even though it's not sweet, it does not scream the need for extreme amounts of maple syrup either. You will not be able to get over the texture of these--light, airy, but almost eggy or custardy on the inside. Ok I'm going to stop before I embarrass myself over how much I'm talking about waffles.

Enough time has passed, you know, like nearly a day, that I can also attest that these freeze beautifully and reheat perfectly in the toaster. Hey, whatever, I was hungry. And I'm showing you this bad picture just so you can see the texture. So holey and airy you wonder how it's even staying together!

Marion Cunningham’s Raised Waffles
via Orangette

My waffle iron is just a regular style, not the thick Belgian kind. As Orangette suspects, and I agree, this recipe is geared for that type. This is not to say you can't make these in a Belgian style iron, they just might not really fill it up and brown as nicely on one side.

½ cup warm water
1 package (2 ¼ tsp.) dry yeast
2 cups whole milk, warmed (I used skim without any ill effects)
1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 tsp. table salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
¼ tsp. baking soda

Pour the water into a large mixing bowl. Keep in mind, this batter is going to rise to double its volume overnight, so choose your bowl wisely. Sprinkle the yeast over the water, and let stand to dissolve for 5 minutes.

Add the milk, butter, salt, sugar, and flour, and beat until well blended and smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it stand overnight at room temperature.

Preheat your waffle iron to a medium-high setting. Mine ranges from 1 to 7 and I had it on 5 which I found to be perfect. My iron is also non-stick so I didn't grease it in any way.

Just before cooking the waffles, add the eggs and baking soda, and stir to mix well. The batter will be very thin, so thin you might think it's not going to work. Pour an appropriate amount of batter to cover the bottle of the iron-mine only took 1/3 cup for each waffle. Cook until golden and crisp.

We enjoyed these with smatterings of jam from a favorite place and pure maple syrup.




2 comments:

Spice Rack said...

Hi,

Your waffle recipe will be another breakfast menu for my family. Your ingredients are easy to find and all of them can be found on any kitchen. Thank you for a wonderful share. Keep posting goodies like this one!

RD said...

Hmm... I'm intrigued. I've never made waffles with yeast before. We'll have to give these a try this weekend!