Waffles From Scratch
Living the Dream
I don’t publish many cooking recipes. I’m definitely not trying to be the Food Influencer with the best recipe for everything. However, that frees me up to be totally un-original, and just tell you what I do. If you like it, try it and let us know how to improve it (“us” means me and Jerry Morrison. Jerry doesn’t write much.).
I’ve incorporated waffles-from-scratch into my regular breakfast rotation, I never look at the recipe, and you can do it, too. You and your family are worth it, aren’t you?
For most people, waffles either come frozen, and go in the toaster
or you go out to a restaurant to have them done properly by a trained professional:
Making them at home just seems like too much trouble for most people. It’s a mess, and you need a special piece of equipment
So it’s a Special Occasion breakfast dish, like Mother’s Day, not something you make when you’re rushing to get the kids off to school. Maybe that’s not you, in which case, congratulations, but it was me, until Jerry enlightened me.
Jerry wrote his own Note about it.
The Waffle-Off
So there I was: making waffles once every blue moon, taking the detachable plates off after they’d cooled and putting them in the dishwasher. Sometimes I’d turn them over to the flat side and make chicken quesadillas. I just used a waffle recipe out of the good old reliable New York Times cookbook. If I was feeling ambitious I’d even beat the egg whites.
Jerry was taking it seriously, as he’s wont to do, researching it, comparing different recipes, buying the best waffle maker. I was dismissive of all that. Waffles were old news to me. We finally decided to have a waffle-off, namely, comparing his to mine. I fully expected it to make no difference.
Jerry and I are a couple of nerds and this is what we do. Coffee has been our main topic of research, on which we’ve done many, many Triangle Tests on almost all aspects of making coffee; sometimes with just the two of us, sometimes with one or two friends, once at Google with 14 subjects, investigating things like:
Can you taste the difference between coffee made with freshly ground beans vs. beans ground several weeks ago? (yes)
Should you freeze the beans? (no)
Can you tell the difference in slight variations in grind size from your grinder? (yes)
Does using a bamboo coffee filter make any difference vs. a paper filter? (yes)
Can you tell if the beans were freshly roasted vs. roasted a couple weeks ago? (no)
Jerry’s been taking that same approach with Waffle Science, so he brought some of his product over. This was not a scientific test; just an informal comparison.
The Results
Jerry’s waffles blew mine away. They were Belgian waffles, which mainly means deeper holes and a fluffier texture inside, while mine were “regular” waffles (here’s the difference). I ended up throwing my waffle maker away, because I’d come to hate it anyway, and buying a Ninja like Jerry’s
This is so much better than the old one I had! It beeps when it’s ready to have the batter poured in, and it beeps when the waffles are ready. Here’s the result: I now have waffles for breakfast at least once a week. That’s a big improvement.
The recipe, which Jerry got from his son’s mother-in-law, is as follows (I’m just giving the single-batch version here. It makes two sets of waffles, which is more than enough for one person. I have a Cowboy Simplification for this, which I’ll give below).
In one bowl combine:
1 cup (113g) Whole Wheat Flour [or 120g all-purpose flour]
3/4 tsp. (3g) Baking Powder
1/4 tsp. (1.5g) Salt
In another bowl (or measuring cup) combine:
1 1/4 cups Buttermilk (more for thinner pancakes)
1 egg. Stir to combine with the buttermilk.
1/2 tsp. (3g) Baking Soda
Stir the liquid into the flour, just until the dry ingredients are all wetted, then stir in:
2 Tbsp. (28.25g) Butter, melted
Fill the cup that comes with the Ninja with batter and pour it into the top. I like putting in a little more than their standard cup, since I’d rather have too much than too little, but it’s up to you. If you have too much, you get an “ear” on the waffle where it bubbles out the top. You can cut that off and give it to the dog, or just eat it. Too little, and you get edges that are less than full.
Notes
Measuring flour by weight is way better than doing it by volume. Get a kitchen scale. On mine, I put the bowl on it, zero it (so the bowl’s weight doesn’t count), and then keep adding flour until I get to around 110-120 grams.
You may not have any buttermilk in the fridge. There are other options below, but buttermilk does add a certain tang that you’ll miss with regular milk.
Adding the melted butter after you’ve combined the wet and the dry ingredients really does make a difference. Putting hot stuff into cold stuff tends to produce curdling.
Cook waffles on #3 - #4 setting.
Use a wooden or stainless steel spoon and glass or plastic bowls. With buttermilk recipes, metal utensils will turn the batter black. It doesn’t affect the taste too much, it just doesn’t look good.
They’re great left over. Freeze extras with plastic wrap in between and toast them for a quick breakfast. Better yet, vacuum seal them in Zwilling containers and keep them in the refrigerator or freezer.
It's easier to mix the baking soda into the dry ingredients but Della finds that mixing it into the wet ingredients makes fluffier pancakes.
Mixing different flours is worthwhile. I made one batch with only almond flour, but that was a disaster. There was no texture and the waffles just crumbled. But putting in 30-40 grams of almond flour first, and then enough wheat flour to bring the total up to 113g is pretty nice. Rye, corn meal, barley …. your choices are endless. But if the waffles don’t hold together, you need more wheat flour in the mix.
Kefir, diluted as needed.
1:2 Greek yogurt:milk.
≈4:1 plain yogurt:milk (add lemon juice for tartness?).
Maybe 3:1 sour cream : water/milk.
Bob’s cowboy simplification
Screw all those ultra-precise measurements of the dry ingredients. I just put in a teaspoon of baking soda, baking power, and salt with the flour. That way I don’t have to look at the recipe. One of our upcoming experiments will be to see if that makes any difference.
I also don’t use whole wheat flour since I don’t have any. All-purpose white flour is fine.
Here It Is In Action
OK, here we go. I’m going to time everything, from thinking “Hey, why don’t I make waffles?” to sitting down at the table and eating. This way I don’t give you those BS timings that represent what a professional chef does, which is probably faster than what you’d do.
It would be nice and TikTok-ish to have a video of the whole thing, but that would require a lot of editing and a camera operator, so no video; just times and photos.
Start 9:04 AM
Turn on Ninja 9:04 AM
Put butter in microwave 9:06 AM
Flours weighed 9:07 AM
Mix buttermilk & egg 9:08 AM
Combine all dry ingredients 9:09 AM
Mix dry with wet 9:10 AM
Pour in melted butter 9:10 AM
Wait for Ninja to be ready 9:10 AM
Pour in the mix 9:11 AM
Ninja beeps (done!) 9:16 AM
Put on plate, cut off excess 9:17 AM
So there you have it: 13 minutes total.
You have two bowls to wash. You can start on that while waiting for the Ninja to finish.
Afterword
You’ll note there is no sugar in this recipe, whereas all the recipes you find online have a tablespoon or more. I was dubious about this at first, but I’ve concluded that Jerry was right (again). You don’t really need it, if you’re putting on fruit and/or syrup.
A teaspoon of salt is more than most of the online recipes use. We think you might be able to notice that, but we haven’t tested it. You could probably use 1/2 tsp instead.
Note that you don’t have to spray the iron with cooking spray, or lubricate it in any way! Similarly, cleanup is minimal. You can wipe it with a damp paper towel.
Bringing the buttermilk & egg to room temperature: don’t bother! I didn’t.