I've been making gluten free pancakes for some time (with varied, but usually good, success) and want to try my hand with waffles as I recently bought a waffle iron.
I intend to use a slightly modified version of my pancake recipe as most recipes online seem to be close to that. I intend to modify the recipe from my post above to this:
- 250ml semi-skimmed milk (green top for those in the UK)
- 250g gluten-free flour (measured with scales)
- 3 fresh medium eggs (bought the day before, stored in fridge, 'medium' here is actually kinda small, hence the larger number)
- 1/2 tbl spoon of vanilla essence, aka a 'splash' (the more the better, I've found!)
- 2tbsp golden caster sugar
- 50g melted unsalted butter
I reason like this:
My pancake mix, while not watery, does not look like it would sit well
in the waffle iron, so I'm thickening it with a more even milk/flour
ratio. I'm not including the bicarbonate of soda or salt, etc, because
my understanding is that those are there to react with elements which
gluten free flour does not possess (in any effective quantity.)
(I am somewhat ignorant of the reactive process involved with bicarbonate of sofa, but tbh the only effect it's had in my gluten free cooking is to give a weird, unpleasant taste.)
I will probably whip the egg whites into stiff peaks, but tbh I would prefer to just make the thick version of pancake batter and pour that onto the waffle iron.
Should I include the egg white whipping and bicarbonate, etc, to achieve edible/tasty/actual waffles?
Am I misunderstanding the recipe of waffles to be essentially the same as pancake batter when it is, in fact, something else?
Best Answer
You misunderstand the purpose of salt and baking soda/baking powder. Your waffles will likely not be great if made from your suggested recipe.
Pancake batter and waffle batter are closely related, but differ in certain key aspects.
It sounds like you're something of a novice baker, and so I'd advise you to start with a readily available gluten-free waffle recipe and then tweak from there, rather than to try and rework a pancake recipe into a waffle recipe.