Spiced Apple Cider Sourdough Waffles With Sauteed Apples

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably know that I’ve been veeeery into making sourdough focaccia lately…some (i.e. my sweet roommate, Carolyn who has to live with random bowls of fermenting dough around the kitchen) would say I’m obsessed. There’s just something weirdly satisfying about making homemade bread and I’m fully on board.

If you’re new to sourdough baking, the quick and dry is that you need a sourdough starter to bake sourdough things. A sourdough starter begins as just a mixture of flour and water and as it ages, the natural wild yeast in the flour activates. That is the veeery abbreviated version – I’m no expert on sourdough but I’ve done a ton of reading on it lately and use The Perfect Loaf as my resource (more deets in the notes section below).

When you feed your starter with fresh flour and water, you essentially throw away most of the existing starter that you fed the day prior (which fermented and grew overnight). You start with a small amount of said starter (I do 10g) and you add flour and water to feed it (I do 50g whole wheat flour, 50g all-purpose flour and 100g water). The small amount of starter you added to this mixture will feed on the flour and water and double in size over night. Because you’re continually repeating this feeding process, you can imagine how much sourdough starter you end up discarding each day.

I was perusing The Perfect Loaf and found a few recipes Maurizio recommends to make use of sourdough starter “discard,” including a version of these waffles. I wanted to riff his recipe a little since all I’ve been craving lately is spiced apple donuts. I replaced the sugar in the recipe with reduced apple cider and added some spices too! The sauteed Honeycrisp apples are the perfect finishing touch and make it feel like you’re eating a healthier version of apple pie for breakfast.

This ended up being the perfect comforting breakfast on a crisp fall morning and the sourdough flavor in the waffles was insane! I’m a big waffle gal and now I’m fully convinced that sourdough waffles are the way to go!

Makes about 12 square waffles; adapted from The Perfect Loaf

INGREDIENTS

For the Waffles:

• 1/2 cup apple cider

• 2 cups buttermilk

• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled

• 1/2 cup stirred down ripe sourdough starter

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 1 cup whole wheat flour

• 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

• 2 eggs

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

For the Sauteed Apples:

• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter

• 3 medium apples, thinly sliced (I like using Honeycrisp apples!)

• 2 Tbsp honey

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• Pinch of ground nutmeg

• Pinch of kosher salt

METHOD

The night before:

1. In a saucepan, bring the apple cider to a simmer over medium-low heat and cook until it has reduced by half, down to 1/4 cup of liquid.

2. In a large bowl, combine the buttermilk with the cooled melted butter. Add your sourdough starter and mix well, until homogeneous.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the two flours, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg. Add the flour mixture to the batter, little by little, stirring until incorporated.

4. Stir in the reduced apple cider. If necessary, add up to 1/2 cup of water so that the batter resembles traditional waffle batter.

5. Cover the bowl with a towel and let it sit in your kitchen overnight.

In the morning:

1. Crack the eggs (make sure they’re room temperature – you can run them under some warm water to help speed this up) and place the whites and yolks in separate clean bowls.

2. Whisk the egg whites until they are light and fluffy and have formed stiff peaks. In the other bowl, lightly stir the egg yolks with a fork until they are smooth.

3. Pour the yolks into the batter along with the salt and baking soda and gently stir. Then, using a spatula, gently fold in the egg whites (you want to be careful not to deflate the egg whites as they will make the batter light and fluffy).

4. Using a ice cream scoop or measuring cup, add the batter into a hot, buttered waffle iron.

5. While your waffles cook, make the sauteed apples. Melt the butter in a medium skillet over medium heat and add the sliced apples, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Cook the apples until they’ve softened up, about 5 minutes.

6. Top the waffles with butter, the sauteed apples and a drizzle of maple syrup, if desired.

NOTES

• Sourdough Resources:

  • The Perfect Loaf has been one of my favorite resources as I’ve gotten more and more into sourdough baked goods. Maurizio does such a great job of walking through recipes step-by-step and his website is full of guides on how to create and maintain sourdough starter. I highly recommend checking it out if you’re interested in learning more about the world of sourdough!

  • I also LOVE following Alexandra’s Kitchen for sourdough recipes (her focaccia recipe is the one I regularly use and SWEAR by!). On her website, she suggests purchasing a sourdough starter if you don’t want to go through the work to create one on your own. So, if you want to try these waffles and don’t have the time to make a sourdough starter from scratch, you can buy one here or here!