Happy Pancake Tuesday! It’s time to wrap up the week of greasy insanity. Let’s make it with waffles.

Szczęśliwego Naleśnikowego Wtorku! Czas zakończyć tydzień tłustego absurdu. Zrobimy to goframi.

I have been challenged by Hannahalla on wykop.pl to make some gluten free sourdough waffles. I thought I had to use some xanthan gum or guar gum to make this, but I found a recipe without any of those on Cultures For Health. I simply converted it to standardised units here, so no credit for me here.

You will need sourdough, obviously. I made mine using brown rice flour (used some white rice flour along the way as well) using a method described in “Sourdough. Zakwas.“.

If you’re really aiming for gluten free, make sure your ingredients are classified as such. This includes oats that are often contaminated at the factory and vanilla extract. I think baking powder and soda may also get contaminated. I know my stuff is contaminated, every day I breath in more gluten in my kitchen than pollution in London. Also, I cheat because I can – I don’t need to have a fully gluten-free stuff and potential contamination is not an issue to me. I comes out cheaper this way.

For dairy free you need to use coconut oil. For egg free – I would try replacing eggs with bananas and a bit of xanthan gum (I’m not sure if without the gluten or the egg white there will be anything to bind the dough in the baking, that’s why some gum as an extra).

Waffle tower

Planning

You need to make the first batter using the starter and leave it for some eight hours. You need a waffle maker or an iron if you plan to make waffles, not pancakes.

Ingredients

Makes around 11-12 waffles.

First batter

• 220 g fresh, thick brown rice starter (by fresh I understand a freshly fed starter)
• 175 g water
• 240 g gluten-free oat flour (i ground my rolled oats)

Final batter

• 40 g maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 15 g (1 tbsp) vanilla extract
• 40 g melted butter or coconut oil
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp water
• some fat for greasing the waffle iron or the pan

Preparation

1. Mix sourdough, water and oat flour together to form a mixture. Cover loosely and let sit at room temperature for eight hours, till the morning in my case. Initially I added 120 g of flour for the night, but it turned out too runny and added 120 g more before making the waffles. It may be that for the overnight stay this is too much and 200 g will be enough. I recommend you try – you can always add remaining flour before adding the soda and water
2. Start heating your waffle making device
3. In the morning you’ll see thick and bubbly mixture. Add maple syrup, baking powder, salt, eggs, melted butter/coconut oil and vanilla (all except for soda and water), and stir it up until it’s thoroughly combined. If now you feel the result is too runny, you can still add some flour
4. Dissolve baking soda in a teaspoon of water and stir into batter. Do not stir it any more now
5. Put the mixture in the waffle maker/iron/frying pan and cook the way you like them

Let me tell you one thing: wow. I did not think they would be very tasty and now look: we’ve eaten all straight away. They came out soft inside, crunchy on the outside. The sugar comes mainly from the maple sugar, therefore they aren’t overly sweet either and can be used for sweet ones as much as the savoury ones.

Waffle with sour cherry confiture

I really recommend trying this recipe.