Ok, so I just got through the first cycle of revising the recipe. It’s pretty close to where I need it to be, but there’s some tinkering to do with ratios and cook time.
Here’s a very roughly written recipe of what I just did (a fully detailed one will be up, once I perfect everything)…
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In a stand mixer bowl, mix 80g organic all-purpose flour + 2.6g T-58 Safbrew ale yeast + 50g egg. Add 100g mineral water at 110°F and blend. Cover the preceding mix in a blanket of 73.6g organic all-purpose flour + 81.6g organic whole wheat pastry flour + 4.8g organic dark rye. Cover the bowl in plastic wrap and let stand 90 minutes at a room temperature of around 72°F.
Add 20g muscovado sugar, 4.5g fleur de sel, 15g orange blossom honey, and the seed contents of 1 Mexican vanilla pod.
Mix on speed #2 in a stand mixer, scraping every few minutes, for a period of about 10 minutes (until the dough is totally clung to the paddle/hook).
Then add 120g beurre d’Isigny (or comparable French butter), about 20g at-a-time, until the dough is satiny. With occasional scraping, this step takes about 7 minutes.
Scrape the dough into a large buttered bowl, sprinkle lightly with flour and cover in plastic wrap. Let sit about 4 hours at around 72°F.
Refrigerate the dough, still in the bowl, for about 1 hour. Then punch the dough down, scrape it onto a floured counter, press by-hand into a long rectangle, fold it over in thirds, and then wrap it plastic. Put it in the fridge overnight.
When ready to make the waffles, use 110g of the dough + 30g Belgian pearl sugar, per waffle. Mix the dough and sugar by-hand, shape into football shapes (minus the pointy ends), and let rise on the counter, covered, about 90 minutes at about 72°F.
Cook each waffle 2mins and 10secs at 365°F.
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So the above is super tasty and about 100x more authentic than any other recipe I’ve found. After all, if these waffles were being done in the late 18th or early 19th century, the above ingredients get us VERY close to what chefs of the day would have had. Flour quality was poorer (hence the partial use of soft whole wheat and rye), only Mexican vanilla existed, milk was rarely if ever used in brioche, and bread yeast didn’t even exist as we know it now. True, stand mixers, plastic wrap and fridges may not have existed at all, but they make things much more consistent and don’t adversely affect the flavor/texture; if anything, they help it along.
Anyway, I want to use a good bit more vanilla, and I think the butter can be upped, while perhaps trimming back on the water a bit. Time will tell. Working on another batch this weekend.
Liege Waffle Recipe / Gaufre de Liège Recette Blog 