Sourdough Waffles and Pancakes
I practically lived on sourdough waffles in college. To my buddies and me at the time, sourdough waffles were the staff of life. One of these friends happened to be the campus locksmith so I had a key to the kitchen for early dawn provisions runs. It takes an awful lot of those little butter pats to do the job! The only rub was having to interrupt eating to go flip the circuit breaker as the electrical load of three waffle irons running simultaneously out of the same outlet was a little much.
Back then, my typical routine was just mixing up equal part parts milk and flour with a cup or so of starter and some salt the night before. Then mixing in a little baking soda the morning of. That produced a very sour waffle or pancake and was a little on the heavy side. No one complained.
Now I mostly use the following recipe. It comes from Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery. Follow it exactly using some healthy sourdough starter and it makes truly awesome waffles and pancakes.
For more Sourdough pancake and waffle recipes…
►Click this link for Jacki’s great sourdough pancake recipe.
►Also, see Jon’s great looking sourdough waffles recipe (and unique technique) in his post below.
Heat the following in a pan until the butter is melted and then let cool to room temperature.
4 oz (1/2 cup or 115 g) butter
8 oz (1 cup or 225 g) milk
Add the milk-butter mixture to:
9 oz (about a cup or 255g) white starter
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp (packed) brown sugar
6 oz (about 1 1/2 cups or 170 g) all purpose flour
Mix these together to form a thick batter, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 8-14 hours. If you do this before going to bed, you’ll have the batter ready for breakfast the next day.
Preheat your waffle iron for 10-15 minutes.
Uncover the batter and whisk in 2 large eggs and 1/4 tsp baking soda. Pour 1/2 to 3/4 cups of batter on the hot waffle iron and close the lid. Let cook for 3-5 minutes until golden brown and crisp.
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Here’s the sourdough pancakes we know and love – I think it’s from the Carl Griffith’s website. I like making these to keep my starter active, especially if I’m in a time when I can’t be home long enough to bake bread.
Sourdough Pancakes
The night before, mix well (to incorporate some air) 1 cup of your sourdough starter with 1½ cups of all purpose flour and 1 cup of warm water (85°-90°). Leave at warm room temperature (70°-85°) overnight, covered well with plastic wrap.
The next morning, return 1 cup of the starter mixture to the fridge.
Then mix the remaining 1½ cups of starter with
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 Tablespoon of sugar (or more if you like)
1 Tablespoon of melted butter
¾ Teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon (generous) of baking soda
2 Tablespoons of milk
Try to have your ingredients at room temperature. This will help to make more tender pancakes.
Bake on a 400° griddle. Enjoy!
Hi,
I just made the Alaskan Frontier Sourdough Hotcakes from the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. My husband and I agreed that they were by far the best pancakes we had ever eaten!! Here is a link I found online with the recipe: http://www.foodgeeks.com/recipes/21853
Nancy… how many eggs do you use, the recipe at that link does not say.
Thanks!
Hi Carolyn,
The recipe from the link above is from Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation book and is dairy and egg free.
Since my husband and I tried that recipe, we have been using Jacki’s sourdough pancake recipe and it has become our current favorite! We add homemade buttermilk instead of milk.
Oh, okay. Perhaps the person that posted it made a typo then because step 2 says…. Beat eggs and add to batter with oil….
I’m trying Jacki’s recipe this morning. I have to cut it in half so I’m using one of my hen’s really big eggs (half of 3 eggs). It sounds great! Thanks for your help & Merry Christmas!
Yes Carolyn, you are right! I am looking at the original recipe from Wild Fermentation, and it does contain one egg! In using Jacki’s recipe, I always freeze the extras for popping into the toaster. Merry Christmas too!
Have you tried aluminum free baking powder? It really improves the taste. Also you can substitute baking powder for baking soda…..
Yes, good stuff. Available in health food stores and whole foods type grocers.
Now I see, looking at Jon’s recipe again, that it doesn’t use milk at all, which is excellent. It’s sometimes hard to scroll through the comments, reading them to search for answers to my questions before posting to ask them, and remember all the words I’m scanning for.
In any event, my question still stands, really, though is now more general: in sourdough recipes where milk is called for, is there any reason I shouldn’t just substitute water?
Thanks again!
Sarah
Hello Eric and all,
Any suggestions as to how to adapt one of these sourdough waffle recipes to spelt flour instead of wheat and to water, or some other non-dairy liquid like almond milk, instead of cow milk? I am hankering to try these and have starter waiting to be used, but am not yet adept enough at sourdoughs and spelt yet to adapt the recipes myself.
I found breadtopia.com two weeks ago through a friend and have been pouring over it ever since. What a fantastic resource you have going here!
Many thanks!
Sarah
I tried Jacki’s Sourdough Pancakes yesterday. I tell you, they were absolutely delicious! The pancakes were the best I have ever made, oh so light and fluffy; and my husband loved the sourdough taste.
I’m new to this Sourdough stuff. I’ve only made one loaf of Sourdough No-Knead bread and these Sourdough pancakes. I have been faithfully feeding my starter, but as a result, I accumulated all this extra sourdough starter, that I didn’t want to just throw out. So this pancake recipe was perfect timing.
Yesterday, I was a little worried about whether I had left enough starter to keep working with a vibrant and active culture. I probably had about ¼ cup remaining; I fed it and let it sit on the cupboard for a while, it looked pretty slack with barely any bubbles. I finally put it in the refrigerator last night, and was pleased this morning to see that there were a lot of bubbles; when I stirred it, it appeared to have a nice thick consistency that I see in Eric’s videos. Yeah!
Thank you Jacki for sharing the recipe. Does anyone have a recipe for sourdough scones?
Shirley
I was up late, and decided to try a midnight (or later) batch of sourdough pancakes using Jacki’s recipe. WOW, they turned out great! Light, moist, and fluffy, and about 3/4″ thick! They do have an obvious sourdough smell when cooking, but when I tried one, I didn’t think the taste was too strong at all, even dry without any honey or maple-syrup. I’m confident the kids will like them just fine.
The only significant deviation from Jacki’s recipe was, instead of milk, I used buttermilk (which I have an abundance of from making butter). Since it’s the first time I’ve made this, I don’t yet know the difference versus using milk. Other than that, my starter is whole-wheat based, and then I used Bob’s Red Mill unbleached unbromated white flour for the recipe. I also let the completed batter (minus butter) sit for about 1 hour at room temp.
I’ll definitely be making it again!
Absolutely the best waffles and pancakes we’ve ever had, and we’re old and have gone through many pancakes over the years. The best! Uses a lot of butter, though.
What is the hydration of the sourdough starter you use? I use a firm starter, and I’m not sure what hydration level I should convert it to for your recipe.
Thanks!
Hi Stan,
I’m not very careful about maintaining a particular hydration level. But I guess it’s in the neighborhood of 100% since I use approximately equal weights of flour and water. Could be closer to 90%. It’s fairly firm also so yours should be fine too as is.
Melodie:
If your batter is too sour, you can ‘sweeten’ it a bit by increasing by a very tiny amount of baking soda. Just a pinch. Too much soda and the recipe will get too bitter. You’ll have to experiment to find the right balance for your family.
You don’t have to put the soda into the entire batter. Take enough batter for your first serving. Mix in the soda. If it is still too sour, on the next serving, increase the soda. Just a pinch. If you started with 1/4 tsp of baking soda, I’d keep it less than 1/2 tsp.
Another method to reduce the sourness is to not let the sponge sit so long after feeding the starter with flour/water. The longer it sits (say several days) the more sour it gets.
Hope this improves your sourdough experience!
jon
Is there a way to adjust the sourness on waffles?I love the texture of the waffles but it is too sour for my family.Thanks
These turned out excellent (I used the shotglass soda method). Husband does not generally like waffles, but he loved these. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
We loved this recipe!!! Thank you
I took Jon’s method but substituted melted butter for the oil. The waffles are ok. My first sour dough waffles ever that I’m aware of. I think I need to let them stay in the waffle iron just a little longer next time.
P.S. My waffles taste kinda like beer, is this normal?
Made these this morning and hands down the best waffles we have ever made, crisp, tasty and never got soggy after applying butter, syrup and peaches.
Made the full recipe for two of us and had enough for two more so we froze one and my wife took one over to her mother as today she does her shopping for her and gets there before she is up and will put it in the toaster and see how it comes out and she can have it for her breakfast.
Thanks for the recipe, we have a number of waffle recipe but this is the best by a long shot.
Hey Dick,
I’m so glad you liked them! It is my fav recipe for pancakes, hands down! Next time you’ll make the whole batch! They really do freeze well.
Just finished eating them. Since I am single I made 1/3 of the recipe. Absolutely delicious and so easy to make. Took maybe 5 minutes tops and the fry them. I was going to save the extras but there were none. I had some good Vermont maple syrup I was given as part of a Christmas present along with Canadian bacon and the syrup added just the right finishing touch. Wish I still had some of the bacon as well.
Much appreciated and this one is a real keeper.
Jacki,
Thanks for the recipe. I will be making these in a couple of days. Looks like a good one. Also a good way to use up the sourdough without having to discard it. That always seemed like a waste to me.
Here it is again…
Rich Sourdough Pancakes
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups Sourdough Starter
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter melted
Beat eggs in a medium bowl. Add milk and sourdough starter.
Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar;
add to the egg mixture, mixing well. Stir in melted butter.
Lightly grease a hot griddle. Drop the batter by 1/4 cup onto
the griddle and cook until light brown, turning once.
Makes 6 servings.
These are the best pancakes! The extras freeze very well and taste delicious heated in the toaster.
These are the best sourdough pancakes I have ever had in my life!!!! Thank you so much for the recipe.
Just fed my starter a couple of days ago and when I looked in the fridge I found that I have quite a bit of it. Went looking for Jacki’s recipe for pancakes and the link does nada.
I was curious to find the answer and just googled “baking powder baking soda difference” and this site was the first one- I’d have to say I pretty happy to find it!
copied and pasted from:
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/foodchemistry/f/blbaking.htm
How Are Recipes Determined?
Some recipes call for baking soda, while others call for baking powder. Which ingredient is used depends on the other ingredients in the recipe. The ultimate goal is to produce a tasty product with a pleasing texture. Baking soda is basic and will yield a bitter taste unless countered by the acidity of another ingredient, such as buttermilk. You’ll find baking soda in cookie recipes. Baking powder contains both an acid and a base and has an overall neutral effect in terms of taste. Recipes that call for baking powder often call for other neutral-tasting ingredients, such as milk. Baking powder is a common ingredient in cakes and biscuits.
Substituting in Recipes
You can substitute baking powder in place of baking soda (you’ll need more baking powder and it may affect the taste), but you can’t use baking soda when a recipe calls for baking powder. Baking soda by itself lacks the acidity to make a cake rise. However, you can make your own baking powder if you have baking soda and cream of tartar. Simply mix two parts cream of tartar with one part baking soda.
What’s the difference beteween Baking soda and baking powder?
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