Belgian waffles recipe for electric waffle iron. Belgian waffles - recipes with photos. How to make dough for Belgian waffles and bake in a pan or waffle iron Waffles with pearl sugar recipe
Liege waffles are the oldest known Belgian waffles. They were invented already in the eighteenth century. The recipe for Liege waffles has the following two features: real Belgian Liege waffles are made from yeast dough with pieces of sugar, the so-called “sugar pearls,” mixed in there just before baking. Now they are produced specially, these are very large sugar granules of irregular shape. Its use allows you to achieve an interesting effect - Liege waffles are coated with a shell of caramel! In this regard, they are truly absolutely unique, and worth a try. However, we won’t go to Belgium to get them; we’ll make them at home. It's real. I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s really possible.
Knead the yeast in warm water, mix with a couple of spoons of flour and let a foam form.
Those who use vanilla cut the pod and extract the seeds. I try to make Liege waffles with ingredients that existed in the eighteenth century. Nowadays vanillin and vanilla extract are used more, but this makes the taste less subtle.
Knead the dough from the rest of the flour, foamed yeast starter, two eggs, vanilla, honey and sugar. The dough should form into a lump and stick well to the walls of the dish.
Melt the butter (4 minutes in the microwave on defrost mode).
Let the dough rest under the film for 1 hour.
Mix the butter into the dough in small portions until completely dissolved.
Let the dough rise under the film for at least 4 hours, or better yet, overnight.
Immediately before starting to bake the waffles, when the waffle iron is already warming up, mix granulated sugar into the dough.
Form 4 balls from the dough.
Bake waffles in a waffle iron at medium or high power with strong pressure at the very beginning. The time depends on the waffle iron (mine is about 3 minutes), but Liege waffles, in any case, should not be light, but brown. This is the caramel that stands out from the "sugar pearls". That shine that you see on the waffle is not fat, as one might assume, but it is also crispy! By the way, immediately after baking, be sure to fill the waffle iron with water while it’s hot, otherwise it will be difficult to clean later.
Liege waffles are my family's favorite waffles!
Step 1: infuse the yeast.
Preparing this delicious dessert is not difficult! First of all, pour the required amount of pure distilled water into a small saucepan and place the container on the stove, turned on at medium level. Heat the liquid to approx. up to 45 degrees, the main thing is that it is not hot, and you can freely dip your fingers into it without getting burned. When the water heats up to the desired temperature, remove the saucepan from the stove and pour the warm liquid into a deep bowl, add 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and 2 teaspoons of dry granulated yeast. Mix the ingredients until smooth and leave the yeast in this form for 15 – 20 minutes, so that they infuse and “bloom”.Step 2: prepare butter and wheat flour.
While the yeast is brewing, it is worth preparing the flour and butter. Place in a clean small saucepan 220
gram of butter and place the container on the stove, turned on at a low level. Melt the fat until liquid, stirring with a wooden kitchen spatula, and make sure that it does not boil. When the butter has melted, remove the saucepan from the stove, place it on the countertop and let the ingredient cool to room temperature. If the oil is slightly warm during kneading, it’s okay, as long as it’s not too hot! 
Then take a deep bowl and sift into it 250
grams of wheat flour through a fine mesh sieve. This process is necessary! Due to it, the flour becomes drier, looser, and in this way you get rid of stray flour lumps and any other contaminants that could get into the flour package during its packaging at the factory. Step 3: prepare the dough.
After 15 – 20 minutes the yeast will dissolve, pour it into a deep bowl, pour the cooled butter into the same container, 1
a teaspoon of liquid vanilla essence, beat in 3 – 4
unshelled chicken eggs and whisk the ingredients until smooth and lightly fluffy. We devote ourselves to this process 2 – 3 minutes. Then add a quarter teaspoon of salt into the liquid mass and gradually begin to add flour to it. We act slowly, at the same time kneading with a tablespoon a homogeneous dough of medium thickness, without lumps. 
Afterwards, cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and place the container in a warm place, for example, near a switched on stove or radiator. Infusing semi-finished flour product 1 hour, during this time the dough will rise and increase in size by approximately 1.5 – 2 times.
Step 4: bring the dough to full readiness.
After 1 hour remove the kitchen towel from the bowl and add to the dough 150
gram of pearl sugar, mix it with a wooden kitchen spatula until smooth, cover the container again with a kitchen towel and let the semi-finished flour product brew in a warm place for another 10 – 15 minutes.
Step 5: bake Liege waffles.
While the dough is re-infusing, turn on and heat the waffle iron. After 10 – 15 minutes remove the towel from the bowl again and lubricate your clean hands 1
teaspoon of refined vegetable oil, divide the dough into 17 – 20
pieces of equal size and place them on a cutting board. 
When the waffle iron has warmed up to the desired temperature, put lumps of dough into it, the number of pieces placed depends on the type of waffle iron, some have only one compartment, others have from 2 to 6 compartments. Close the waffle iron and bake the waffles 3 – 4 minutes.
After the required time has passed, open the waffle iron, pry off the waffles one by one with a wooden kitchen spatula, transfer them to a metal oven rack and let the sweet dessert cool to room temperature. 
Cook the rest of the waffles in the same way until the dough runs out. Afterwards we place them on a large flat dish and serve them to the sweet table. Step 6: Serve Liege waffles.
Liege waffles are served at room temperature. After baking, their texture changes slightly, they become denser and a little dry, so the waffles should be eaten immediately after they have cooled. If desired, this delicious sweet dish can be supplemented with hot chocolate, any type of icing, jam, fruit, berries, condensed milk or jam. It is pleasant to enjoy this dessert with a cup of freshly brewed tea of any kind, with coffee, with a glass of cocoa or fresh milk. Cook with love! Bon appetit!
- – Instead of dry yeast, you can use fresh yeast, 50 grams for the above mass of ingredients.
- – Instead of liquid vanilla essence, you can use 1 tablespoon of vanilla sugar.
- – Pearl sugar is a mandatory ingredient and, unfortunately, cannot be replaced with any other sugar! Its snow-white lumps are heat-resistant; at high temperatures they do not melt or caramelize, maintaining their original shape.
- – To prepare this type of waffle, you must use a special waffle iron for baking Belgian waffles! In an ordinary, old, Soviet waffle iron, waffles from this type of dough will not work!
Ingredients:
One of Belgium's culinary highlights, a favorite snack for locals and a must-try for tourists, is the country's waffles. But you also need to keep in mind that in Belgium, like in many European countries, local culinary patriotism is highly developed.
What does it mean? This means that cities or regions of one country specialize in recipes for the same dish that are sharply different from those of their neighbors. So, Belgian waffles are not just one recipe, there are a lot of them. The most widespread are 2 species - and Liege. (Well, purely for information, I’ll list that there are also Namur, Herve, Walloon, hot Flemish, Tilph and waffles from Verviers - this is not counting the types that are not geographically referenced.)
It is believed that Gaufres de Liège, Liege waffles, appeared no later than the 18th century, at a time when Liege was an independent bishopric (later it went to France, from which a piece was discovered even later that became modern Belgium). Legend has it that one day the prince-bishop was attracted to the kitchen by a delicious smell: it was the cook experimenting with dough.
He mixed crushed lump sugar into the pie dough, rolled it into thin layers and tried baking them that way. So, the characteristic features of Liege waffles are, firstly, a rich yeast dough, and secondly, sucre grain perlé - especially large granulated sugar. Classic Liege waffles have a round shape and a square topography, I just don't have the right waffle iron.
How to prepare "Belgian Liege waffles" step by step with photos at home
Step 1
Step 2
Step 4
Step 8
Cover the container with the dough with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour (at least 3 is possible). This is the hour indicated in the preparation time.
It’s been a while since I picked up my favorite Bork waffle iron (crossed out)! And why all? Because I suffered from the recipe for Liege waffles sent to me from Belgium. The recipe was sent by my friend Katya, her Belgian mother-in-law bakes such waffles, and Katya says that the deliciousness is mind-blowing.
Do you like Grilyazh candies? The ones with crunchy caramel inside? This means that you will also love the caramel Liege waffles that crunch on your teeth with pieces of sugar.
So why, you ask, did I suffer so much? Because Liege waffles require special pearl sugar, which is not found anywhere except in Belgium. I went to all the cool supermarkets, sniffed all the shelves with a variety of sugars - there was no pearl sugar, and that was it... And then - lo and behold! I came across, if not pearl sugar, but large crystals of brown sugar, produced by Mistral. It has recently appeared in all stores, so there is a chance to buy it.
What is the point of this pearl sugar? In these waffles, the sugar should harden like a caramel crust on the waffle and crunch on the teeth, that is, it should not dissolve in the dough. Therefore, this large-crystalline one was perfect! It doesn't dissolve anymore. But it seems to me that it doesn’t really melt. I looked on the Internet - a fellow cook who is hungry for Liege waffles is pounding lump sugar (not refined sugar) in a mortar. It is also dense and does not dissolve quickly.
There is an opinion that Liege waffles must be kneaded in advance and placed in the refrigerator overnight. Otherwise they don't have the same texture. I conducted an experiment. I baked waffles immediately and the next morning, and fed both versions to the child. The child was incredibly happy that there were waffles at all, but did not notice any difference between the evening and morning waffles. Me too, though. The good news is that Liege waffle batter keeps well in the refrigerator for up to five (!) days! We knead it once, then we feed the family for breakfast for five days. I think it's great.
So, for waffles we need:
70 g fresh yeast or 25 g dry
270 g warm milk
2 packets of vanilla sugar
a pinch of salt
400g very soft or semi-melted butter
500 g sugar crystals or large pieces
We dilute the yeast in warm milk, add vanilla sugar and let it ferment for 15-20 minutes. Add 250 g of flour and leave to rise for half an hour. The dough will double in size!
After this, add the slightly beaten eggs, then the butter, then the rest of the flour and salt, knead the dough thoroughly for about 20 minutes. If you have a planetary mixer, it will knead everything perfectly for you using the hook attachment. After the dough has been kneaded, add all the coarse sugar at once, mix it into the dough and let it rise again for half an hour or forty minutes. I used fresh yeast and my dough rose fantastically!
After this rise, the dough can be stored in the refrigerator. Now it is soft and buttery, but the next day it will be dense and easy to form into balls. But if you're impatient, you can bake it right away. For the Bork waffle iron, I took pieces of approximately 140 g (they are the size of a tennis ball). But a bork is a large waffle iron; if you have a smaller one, then 100 g of balls will be enough for you.
The waffles turn out dense, soft, cupcake-like, and don’t go stale for a long time. Quite sweet and crunchy on the teeth with sugar crystals. They are delicious served with whipped cream.
Until a certain time, I was quite indifferent to waffles. I haven’t tried the Belgian ones yet. Belgian waffles are not like their counterparts; they are much thicker, softer, and most importantly, tastier. Among the Belgian waffles, I found the Liege waffles to be especially interesting, with a typical caramel crust. I studied a lot of different sources and after studying I realized that although there are many recipes, there are quite a few trustworthy ones. I immediately rejected recipes that used the “wrong” sugar, then those where the consistency of the dough was liquid, then those that had too much yeast or no yeast at all, etc. In the end, I was left with a book about Belgian cuisine from my closet ;-) Because I was tired of searching on the Internet, it was too big...
The right sugar is important for Liege waffles. These waffles use so-called “pearl” sugar - sucre grain perlé. It is he who is responsible for this indescribable caramel crust, which distinguishes Liege waffles from all others. Not to be confused with coarse sugar for sprinkling on buns, such as Swedish kanelbulars, and cookies (German: Hagelzucker), it is much smaller and will not melt properly. It is much better to take refined sugar and split it into pieces of about 1 cm. In the photo in the middle there is Belgian sucre grain perlé, on the right is German Hagelzucker, and on the left are matches for scale :)
The second important thing is the consistency of the dough. Unlike most thinner waffles, which have a thinner batter, and Brussels waffles, which have a slightly thicker batter than pancakes, Liege waffles have a thick batter. You can easily make balls out of it, which is exactly what you need ;-)
The third important thing is a small subtlety of technology that is almost never mentioned. The waffle batter needs to sit overnight in the refrigerator. This is how it was in my book on Belgian cuisine, I saw it on the Internet only once, it even suggested putting the dough in the freezer for 30 minutes, and then in the refrigerator overnight. Because I won’t believe it until I try it, but I tried baking waffles immediately and after standing in the refrigerator. I liked the second option much more, the sugar melts much better, there are practically no unmelted pieces left, the caramel crust is more uniform and the structure of the dough itself is much better. So I’m definitely in favor of keeping the dough in the refrigerator, especially since it’s very convenient to knead the dough in the evening and bake waffles in the morning.
Many recipes on the Internet and books indicate an absolutely incredible amount of yeast - 70-80 g per 750 g of flour, although the dough is very heavy, it seems to me that 10 g per 250 g of flour is sufficient.
A batter of 250g flour is enough for 6 waffles and in my opinion, 6 waffles are enough for 6 people. Well, they are very filling. Recipe from a book about Belgian cuisine, slightly modified.
Liege waffles (Gaufres de Liège)
10 g fresh yeast
70 ml warm milk
250 g flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1.5 tsp liquid honey
1 large egg, room temperature, slightly beaten with a fork
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla sugar
125 g soft butter*
125 g pearl sugar*
* these are the original proportions (2 parts flour / 1 part butter / 1 part “pearl” sugar - for me it turned out to be too sweet and too much butter. I reduced the amount of butter and sugar to 80 g each, I like it better this way , although a departure from the original recipe)
Dissolve yeast in warm milk, add 2 tbsp. flour, stir, cover with film and let rise for 30 minutes. Then stir in the egg, add honey, vanilla sugar, salt, cinnamon and the remaining flour. Then stir in the butter and, at the very end, pearl sugar. The dough turns out quite thick and viscous. Cover with film and place in the refrigerator overnight.
The next day, divide the dough into portions of 100-120 g, roll each into a ball, like this:
Heat a waffle iron (the best waffle iron is specifically for Belgian waffles, it is deeper and has larger indentations) and bake the waffles until a beautiful caramel crust forms (the time depends on the power of the waffle iron, about 3-5 minutes). You can serve it with cream, various syrups, and fruits.
