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.
{ 50 comments… read them below or add one }
Do you cover the equal parts flour/Milk to one cup starter recipe? and also what is the baking soda for?
Yes, I covered the bowl with a towel at the time but if I were to follow that same recipe now, I would cover with plastic wrap as is instructed in the Nancy Silverton recipe. By the way, you may have to experiment with the "equal parts" thing as you may find a thinner batter more to your liking.
The baking soda is to help with the rise. Most waffle/pancake recipes call for eggs. The way I used to make them didn’t involve eggs which is why this recipe is "on the heavy side" as I mention. The soda helps lighten them up a little. The above Nancy Silverton recipe produces light waffles that actually cook all the way through.
In a taste test, I think the vast majority of people would choose Nancy’s recipe over the way I used to make them. My recipe was just a tad (a lot) on the primitive side.
Eric
Hi Eric,
First, let me say that I love this website. I found more useful information here than anywhere else.
Next… I started making sourdough pancakes because I couldn’t bear to throw the starter away. I found this recipe somewhere and tweaked it a bit, but it is the best pancakes ever. I hope it is ok to share it here.
Jacki
Rich Sourdough Pancakes
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups Sourdough Starter mix
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 mix. 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.
Hi Jacki,
Thanks for the nice feedback (and your order
). Your recipe is very appreciated. It looks great! I’ve added a note above so people will more easily find it.
Eric
I need a sourdough recipie that does not use any baking powder or soda and preferably no eggs.. Merci, khaled.
Would you have a recipe, using this starter, for sourdough biscuits? My husband loves biscuits but I don’t want to try just any recipe and I’m happy with your bread recipes on this site.
Thank you.
Hi Jessica,
Not yet, but I would recommend heading over to http://www.thefreshloaf.com and checking (or asking) there. They have zillions of recipes and if one for sourdough biscuits isn’t already posted, I’ll bet if you ask in the forum someone will have something for you.
Maybe a better option is join the Yahoo Sourdough users group (Google “yahoo groups”). Great bunch of people and passionate and knowledgeable about sourdough baking. They would definitely have something good.
I hope you find something.
I just acquired a sourdough starter from my sister who has had it in her husband’s family for over 60 years. My sister keeps it in the refrigerator and doesn’t remember the last time she touched it but her mother-in-law gave her instructions to use it, she just hasn’t used it and hasn’t taken advantage of this prescious commodity. The starter had liquid on the top and a bit of mold and was crusty. I took a tablespoon and brought it home to try to revive a bit of it. I didn’t pour off the liquid like your video says, but instead stirred it in. Would you recommend that this starter is fit to use? I also started another starter using your pineapple juice method. I want to fix sourdough waffles for my inlaws in a week and am hoping one of them works.
Lisa Black
Hi Lisa,
I would certainly try to revive your sister’s starter. Just take that tablespoon and mix in a tablespoon of flour and a couple teaspoons of water and leave it on the counter. Hopefully it will start to bubble and come to life within a few hours. Then feed it again by doubling its volume. (Add 2 T four and about 1 1/2 T water). Double twice a day until you have the quantity you need then you can refrigerate it and just feed it every few days or so to keep it in optimal health.
Even the deadest looking starter can be revived sometimes. Let us know how it goes.
The pineapple juice technique is good but may take longer to get up to speed than working with the existing stuff. Plus it may not work at all the first time. Sometimes you have to try a couple times before it takes.
Good luck.
I have a “regular” starter going from a dried starter a friend in the Yukon gave me. It’s bubbling and so far we’ve had wonderful biscuits, made a batch of sourdough fruitcake, and added some to the NKB we made last week.
Yesterday I took some of the starter and fed it with KA whole wheat flour and a bit of sugar & water. This morning I fed it again, with some wonderful organic cane sugar, white whole wheat flour (KA), and water – hoping to do some whole grain breads.
Question is: Has anyone played with soaked cracked wheat in a sourdough NKB? There is a commercial sourdough cracked wheat bread (not too heavy on the cracked wheat) that my husband loves and I’d like to recreate it at home.
Love the site, and thanks for all the help!
Hi there, I made Jacki’s sourdough pancakes a couple of weeks ago, but found they were a little tough for my family’s liking. This morning, I tried them again, but thought that perhaps Canadian AP flour had too much gluten, so I used cake and pastry instead. They were wonderful, very tender and delicate and great flavour. Thank you Jacki for a great recipe.
I’ve been using this receipt for almost 30 yrs.
2 (or more) cups of starter
1 Tbs. sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt.
2 Tbs. veg. oil
mix well, set aside.
From this batter, spoon out what you need for the waffle into a mixing bowl.
In a shot glass, mix 1/8 – 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and a small amount of water, stir to dissolve the soda. Then gently fold this into the mix. It will start to become light and airy. Pour onto waffle iron (or griddle for pancakes). These will be very light.
Repeat the shot glass/soda mix for each waffle.
The soda controls the lightness. If very sour, use a tad more soda. If you use too much soda the waffles will taste somewhat bitter.
It’s great with pure maple syrup.
Thanks a lot, Jon. This looks great. I added a mention of this above so people can find it easily enough.
After you mix up the initial ingredients and set aside, does it matter how long you set it aside for?
Unlike other recipes where you mix milk & flour, this recipe uses 100% starter for the base of the batter. There is no need for it to be set aside to rest after mixing in the egg/sugar/salt/oil. The baking soda causes the leavening.
I was trying to emphasize that you have 2 bowls, a bowl of batter and a bowl that you put a small amount of batter into and then fold the soda into it before pouring it onto the hot iron or griddle.
If you add the baking soda to the entire batter all at once then the entire batch will rise and become airy as it is folded in. Then as you bake waffles, a rather time consuming task, the batter will deflate, settle, and become flat before you finish using it. So you only want to fold soda into what you are going to immediately cook. Thus the main batter is kept free (set aside) of baking soda so it doesn’t go flat over the time it takes to cook each waffle.
This is especially useful if you are baking for many people over an extended period of time. In my previous life as a Sea Captain (I recently retired) I would cook pancakes for the crew on Sundays if we were at sea (I like to say my sourdough is world-famous since it’s been all over the pacific rim). Breakfast lasts 1 hour so crew would come trickling into the galley over that period of time
as some got ready for work and others got off work. That is how I found out that using the soda on only the amount of batter I was immediately cooking would keep the pancakes light. Since most folks are used to heavy flour pancakes they were pleasantly surprised at the lightness. They resemble crepe’s. I never cooked waffles on the ship because it took too long. I use the same receipt for waffles & pancakes. I do the waffles at home. The sourdough is from potato water that I
first started in 1975 (and kept alive since) after a trip to Alaska where I discovered sourdough pancakes in a Ketchikan diner.
Jon
I just read Jacki Kennedy’s sourdough pancake recipe posted May 7, 2007.
I’ve been making sd pancakes for a few weeks and love being able to use up my extra starter (as well as the pancakes!)
In all the recipes I’ve used and read you mix everything together except the eggs and soda/baking powder then leave it at room temp over night. Eggs etc. go in just before using. Jacki’s recipe didn’t mention any of that. Does she put it all together in the morning and use it right away?
Betty
Try this San Francisco Exploratorium [science museum]website.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/bread/recipe-sourdough.html
Note the grape based starter link at the bottom of the page.
Eric,
Do you have a process for converting a regular SD knead type recipe to NKSD? I tried converting my Olive rosemary recipe to NK, but the dough came out too wet and I didn’t get the oven spring I usually get by kneading. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Chuck
Hey Chuck.
My approach to converting something to a no knead sourdough recipe just starts with the basic no knead recipe and then adding whatever ingredients I want to add.
So if you go over to http://www.breadtopia.com/no-knead-recipe-variations, you’ll see a few no knead variations that are basically the standard no knead recipe but all the ingredient lists show 1/4 cup sourdough starter in place of the usual 1/4 tsp of instant yeast.
Where’s the RICE?
I’ve been doing a little recipe searching online for sourdough pancakes. I’ve noticed many recipes require using a flour based starter. My sourdough starter is the one where you add potato flakes. Does the potato flake starter work the same for these flour based starter recipes? If not, does anyone have a good pancake recipe using the potato flake sourdough starter?
Hi Sue,
Potato flake starter should work just the same. May even taste better! Let us know how it turns out.
Hi Eric,
First of all, I want to THANK YOU for sharing the starter recipe with pineapple juice. I tried it this week and it worked, on my first try! No more buying King Arthur sourdough culture for me! I think mine tastes even better than theirs!:-)
I tried making pancakes tonight for my starter’s “maiden voyage”. As I said, the flavor was excellent. They were very dense and heavy, however. I used a recipe I found online somewhere, quite different from the one you posted by Nancy Silverton. I plan to try that one next.
I have two questions about Nancy’s recipe. Do you alter the recipe at all if you choose to make pancakes instead of waffles? (I almost never make waffles but I make pancakes frequently.) I know most waffle recipes call for more fat than pancake recipes.
My other question is will it be okay if I use 9 oz. of white whole wheat starter for the recipe (since that is all I have) and then combine it with 6 oz. of all purpose flour, as the recipe calls for?
Thank you!
Hi Cathy,
Sorry for taking so long to reply. Have you long since gone ahead with the pancake version?
I use the same recipe for both pancakes and waffles but I thin the pancake batter a tad more so they thin out more on the griddle and cook through easier.
Did you try the white whole wheat starter? I’d sure give it a try. The eggs and baking soda should be more than enough to counter the added “heaviness” of the whole wheat. Then you’ll end up with a healthier and maybe better tasting pancake.
Waffles (Sour Dough) Light as a feather.
I forgot how much fun I had with sour dough starts and various breads. I stopped all the baking for over a year and a half and after having some great sour dough waffles from my old start I shared with friends I was lured back into the fun of baking.
Sour Dough Waffles
1 Cup of starter
2 cups warm milk
8 tablespoons butter “melted”
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 cups flour
2 eggs
1/4 tsp baking soda
Add milk, butter, salt, sugar and flour beat with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 -3 minutes. Cover with plastic bag or wrap and set aside at room temperature over night.
The following day, preheat the waffle iron. Whisk eggs and baking soda in to the batter until thoroughly combined. Batter should be thin.
Pour 1/2 cup of batter into the hot waffle iron. Let it set for 30 seconds before closing the lid. Cook until brown around 5 minutes Serve with your favorite syrup.
The batter will keep for several days in the fridge.
These waffles are the finest I have had in my 70 years on this earth. They will float away from your plate so be careful.
JIM S
? Sourdough Waffles from Store Bought Mix ?
1. I read all the waffle recipes and they all sound great. After studying them I was wondering if instead of preparing everything from scratch could one of the good old buttermilk pancake/waffle mixes from the grocery that has everything already in the mix work?
2. Could the water be added per the directions on the box along with a sourdough starter and let it work over night?
3. I’m not sure how much sourdough started would be needed and if the amount of water should be reduced.
4. Would extra eggs or egg whites and baking soda need to be added in the morning just before cooking as some recipes call for?
This is just an idea to simplify things, but hopefully not reduce quality.
Joe
This is a question for Jon and his waffles… I am very intrigued about the soda and shot glass… could you mix all of the soda and all of the water at one time and then add 1 Tbls of the soda and water mixture into each individual waffle… that way you wouldn’t need to be mixing the soda and water each time… I was wondering if pre-mixing the soda and water somehow lessened the power of the soda… loved the idea… I have been using this recipe for pancake… it is the BEST!
I don’t know if you could pre-mix the soda & water. I suggest you try it. I suppose if the soda & water are well mixed it may not matter. If you get too much soda then the batter tastes bitter. I prefer to mix it immediately before folding in so that I have better control. I’d sure hate to have it all premixed and be cooking away from the home and come to discover that the soda/water premix didn’t work out well.
Jon
Betty’s question was never answered….I had the same question! Betty asked:
In all the recipes I’ve used and read you mix everything together except the eggs and soda/baking powder then leave it at room temp over night. Eggs etc. go in just before using. Jacki’s recipe didn’t mention any of that. Does she put it all together in the morning and use it right away?
Another question: Nancy Silverton’s recipe appeared to be only for making waffles, and as I understand it, the batter for waffles is different from the batter for pancakes, or am I mistaken about that? Would there need to be any adjustments made to the batter to make pancakes (instead of waffles) from Nancy’s recipe?
Hi Betty and Bread Doofus.
See Jacki’s reply below.
On your other question, I use waffle recipes for pancakes and vice versa without changes. You can start that way and adjust the liquid if you prefer a thicker or thinner batter. I think it’s just a personal preference thing.
When I want to make pancakes, I feed my starter the night before and make sure there is enough for the pancakes with some left over for the fridge. I put it all together and use it right away.
Thanks for posting this. I made sourdough pancakes today. This is not my first time making them, but it is the first time since finding this page and, not coincidentally, my first good batch. I wasn’t very pleased with the way they came out the previous times I made them. I’m not sure now where I found the recipes, but once they were pretty bland, and once they just didn’t rise at all, so they were too dense.
I had a hard time deciding which recipe to try today. I really liked Jon’s approach with adding baking soda on a per pancake basis, but Nancy Silverton’s recipe sounded really tasty. So I sort of merged the two. I made the pre-mix as in Nancy Silverton’s recipe (with a bit more milk added to compensate for my firm starter). Then in the morning I added two eggs. On the side, I mixed up 1/2 cup of water with a teaspoonful of baking soda. I took a pancake’s worth of batter and put it into a small bowl, then added about 1/2 teaspoon of the baking soda mixture to it and mixed it in. This made excellent pancakes.
So thank you all, especially Eric and Jon for the great recipes, input and ideas.
Russ
I want to heap a little more praise on Jon for his elegant, down-to-earth recipe and technique for pancakes. A couple of weeks ago, I was feeding my two starters, one white, the other whole wheat, twice a day, so I accumulated quite a bit of discards, which I just dumped into a quart jar each time, mixing them both. This morning, I took a couple of cups of mixed starter discards out of the fridge, added honey, salt, melted butter, and an egg. Like Russ, I followed Paul’s idea of mixing up a tsp of baking soda with water ahead of time, then adding some to each pancake’s worth of batter just before pouring into the skillet. I used about a tsp of the mixture for each cake. The baking soda didn’t really dissolve in the water, so I had to stir a little each time, but the mixture is stable until you add it to the batter.
Great tasting pancakes. Light and airy–who needs double-acting baking powder? Leave that to folks who don’t have sourdough.
I just mixed the hooch into the starter before making my batter, so my pancakes had a bit of an alcoholic undertone. I could have avoided that by pouring off the hooch before beginning, and thinning with a little milk, but we liked them the way they were.
Thanks, Jon.
I find that a tsp of baking soda leaves an off-taste. I use 1/3-1/2 tspn and mix it with about 1/3-1/2 oz of water. When you add it to the batter you get the activity and at that point you would use a wooden spoon to gently fold the ingredients together. This will cause the batter to become light & airy. Just to be to vigorous or mix to long.
Happy baking
jon
Hi Jon,
I agree that a teaspoon would be too much baking soda to add to the batter, but that was just in the solution. I actually only ended up using about 1/4 or less of the baking soda solution since I was only adding a very small amount to each pancake. The only reason I mixed up so much was to make it easier to get it out by the spoonful.
Thanks again for your great ideas and all your input on this.
Russ
Jon,
That is basically what I did, too. I had a little over 1/4 cup of water to 1 tsp baking soda, and used a small spoonful of the mixture for each cake. I probably wound up with less than 1/8 tsp for each pancake, but it was enough to get the good bubbling action.
Dave
Where can I get starter mix for sourdough pancakes
Hi Mark,
Not sure if you’re referring to sourdough starter, but if you are, this may help:
http://www.breadtopia.com/acquiring-a-sourdough-starter/
Does anyone know how to make homemade bread that will stay as soft and pliable as store-bought bread? I realize that all the additives they put in commercially made bread help to keep it soft. After a couple of days my bread gets a little dry and will break if I fold it in half. Is there anything that I can add to my dough recipe that will fix this? I just use a standard white bread recipe found in most cookbooks.
Thanks for your help!
Becky,
Many of us have found that bread made with a sourdough starter, instead of commercial yeast, keeps much longer. You might try that.
Jon, I have not tried your waffles yet, but I ran across this recipe and the waffles are very light and airy too…seems easier, but I told my husband I wanted to try yours too…bought the kitchenaid pro series belgiun waffle baker and had some this morning…DELICIOUS…got this off the King Arthur site, they call for king arthur flour, but I just used what I had
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/RecipeDisplay?RID=93 …enjoy
Overnight sponge
2 cups All-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup sourdough starter, straight from the refrigerator (not fed)
Waffle batter
all of the overnight sponge
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1) To make the overnight sponge, stir down your refrigerated starter, and remove 1 cup.
2) In a large mixing bowl, stir together the 1 cup starter, flour, sugar, and buttermilk.
3) Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight.
4) In a small bowl or mixing cup, beat together the eggs, and oil or butter. Add to the overnight sponge.
5) Add the salt and baking soda, stirring to combine. The batter will bubble.
6) Pour batter onto your preheated, greased waffle iron, and bake according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
7) Serve waffles immediately, to ensure crispness. Or hold in a warm oven till ready to serve.
A friend recently got me started on sourdough starter and I’m new to your website. I have the concoction in the refrigerator and am wonder “what next”. I have been baking with organic sprouted spelt flour for dietary reasons. Do you have any experience with sprouted grain flours? There is limited information available, but i am determined to come up with the perfect loaf using the sprouted spelt flour. Thanks for your wonderful contribution!
My experience with sprouted grains is fairly minimal. There’s a sprouted grain recipe in Peter Reinhart’s latest book on whole grain baking that I’ve made. It was very good but the percentage of the ingredients that was actually sprouted grain was not that great as I recall. Sprouted grain flour performs much differently that flour made from unsprouted whole grains. I think there’s a limit to how much of the recipe can be sprouted grain flour without the bread being a total brick. I’m sure many others are way more knowledgeable about it, but here we are on the sourdough waffles page so not sure who’s going to see your question.
I’m new to sourdough and Breadtopia. I’ve noticed that some recipes call for “fed starter” rather than “out of the refrigerator starter”. Precisely what is meant by “fed starter”?
Just found the answer to my question. Guess I should trust Google more!
We are going to have our first SD waffles in years tomorrow morning. I’m trying Nancy S. recipe. I threw out all my SD recipes thinking I’d never want them again. Silly me! I’m so glad I found your great site. The videos are a great help. If I could only learn to get my pizza into the oven like you do.
Back to waffles—- I was taught to beaten and folded in the egg whites seperately when making waffles. This makes them light and airy.
Just started dealing with the half science project half food product that is sourdough starter. Thank you for having a great website and an even greater knowledge of sourdough.
I have bubbles in my starter, and am making my first batch of sourdough pancake batter to use tomorrow….later tomorrow. It will be good…I hope. The bubbles I have in the starter are fine but lively. I nursed the stuff in a clean glass jar, and five days later – bubbles!
The sourdough pancake batter looks good. I can’t wait to use it tomorrow.
Sourdough Pancakes
Make sure that griddle is HOT HOT at least 400 degrees before starting…
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1 tsp sugar
1 or 2 TBL water depending on thickness of start
Combine above in small bowl (1) and mix well
1 egg
1 tsp oil
Combine above in small bowl (2) and mix well
Combine bowls (1) and (2) and mix well
Now divide the combined bowls in half (1/2) and add only half to the… 2 cups starter
Feed Sourdough Start the night before you want pancakes… I like to make mine about the consistency of pancake batter… ie not to thick… because when you add the other ingredients it thickens up with the foam…
When you add the salt/soda/sugar/egg combo to the Start… stir vigorously… it should double in size
The experiment is over now… the end result is what I would like to hear a report back on… well it’s not really over until you eat the pancakes…
WHAT WAS THE TEXTURE LIKE?? I am sure they tasted good but… WHAT WAS THE TEXTURE LIKE??
As soon as I hear some responses back… I will tell you what I was experiencing and what I am experiencing now…
Cook and Eat and Enjoy…
Mikhael… could you and others who read this do an experiment for me… Make some sourdough pancakes by following this recipe… I will write it out in detail so everyone can follow the same experiment…
this was suppose to be in the above Sourdough recipe
I frequently just use leftover starter for the batter, toss in an egg, some salt and some soda, maybe some oil, and they come out great.
You can freeze leftover SD pancakes and waffles and they freeze quite well.
Why do you have to wait 8 hours for the rise in waffles, but not in pancakes?