Sourdough Is The Magic Ingredient For The Fluffiest Waffles Ever

There's nothing like a big, fluffy waffle slathered in butter and real maple syrup. But if we're being honest, this classic breakfast food often leans far too sweet. If you're looking for a way to restore flavor balance to your waffles, consider reaching for your sourdough starter. 

Sourdough starter is essentially the base ingredient for all things sourdough, from bread and sourdough crackers to waffles. It's made with equal parts water and flour that has been incrementally "fed" with more flour each day. This carby base supports a variety of wild yeasts and bacteria that give the starter its distinct flavor — which will change over time based on how long the culture has been alive and what type of flour you use. Part of the feeding process involves removing a portion of the starter, which you can, of course, throw away, or use for some other tasty purpose in your kitchen — like waffles. 

You'll need to use about ½ a cup of starter for each cup of flour in your waffle batter. Once your other waffle ingredients, like milk, eggs, butter, and leavener, are added, you can cook your waffles. It's important to note that you may need to add extra liquid (since the sourdough starter has a consistency like a very thick brownie batter), to ensure your waffle batter is thin enough to cook. 

Waffles aren't the only breakfast recipe that you can use your sourdough discards for. Pancakes are another batter-based recipe that will benefit from the tangy starter. You can add the starter to the flour, buttermilk, and salt the night before so that the flavors can meld before you add the rest of the ingredients and cook it up. Like the waffle batter, it's important to not omit the leavening agents, like baking soda or baking powder, because these are still the primary lifting ingredients. The sourdough is more for flavor than function. 

You can also add a bit of sourdough starter to your muffin batter to tame the sweetness of your additions, like chocolate chips or blueberries. Once you master these basic recipes and can manage to keep your sourdough starter alive, you can graduate to working with breads and yeasted doughs, including sourdough cinnamon rolls.

The flavor of the sourdough culture can take weeks to build, so making sourdough waffles, or any breakfast treat, isn't really a last-minute option. However, if you ask around, you may know someone who has an established starter and is looking to give some of their discards away to a good (and tasty) cause.