Whole Grain Waffles

Alice Waters: The Art of Simple Food; Recipe 20

We have been collecting maple syrup.  Problem is, we don’t eat enough foods that call for maple syrup.  Not the biggest fans of pancakes (they are heavy after all), we thought we might prefer waffles.  But it’s been years since we have had waffles.  Do we even like them enough?  Not to mention we don’t have a waffle iron. In order to find out more about us and waffles, we borrowed an electric appliance and turned to Alice Waters for guidance.  Though pancakes sit heavy with us, there was no denying the success of Alice’s whole grain pancakes we made a few months ago.  Figuring she’d come through on the waffle front as well.  And she did.  The batter consisted of whole wheat pastry flour, all-purpose flour (note: recipe calls for no all-purpose flour- I ran short on the pastry flour.  Using all-purpose will make the waffles more dense, but we did just fine adding some in), cornmeal, and rye flour, whole milk (should have been buttermilk), baking powder, eggs, and a whole stick of butter(!).  Luckily we pulled my father into this meal, so we didn’t consume that whole stick by ourselves.   So these were just as heavy as pancakes, but we liked them better.  The recipe was tasty and the waffles were both crisp and fluffy which was preferable.  Used Burton’s Maple Syrup from Indiana and saw a lot of possibilities for gourmet-ifying waffles with add-on ingredients.  Alice Waters came through again with a simple flavorful batter and I would certainly make waffles again with this recipe.  Please excuse the photo, which I forgot to take until I was more than halfway done eating my waffles.