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Waffles with Yeast
1 tablespoon melted lard or butter 1 cake compressed yeast 2 cups milk, scalded and cooled 2 eggs 1 tablespoon sugar 2½ cups sifted flour 1 teaspoon salt Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the lukewarm liquid; add lard or butter, flour, salt, and eggs well beaten. Beat thoroughly until batter is smooth; cover and set aside to rise in a warm place, free from draft, for about one hour. When light, stir well. Have waffle iron hot and well greased; fill the cool side. Brown on one side; turn the iron and brown on the other side. If the batter is too thick, the waffle will be tough.
If wanted for over night, use one fourth cake of yeast and an extra half teaspoon of salt. Cover and keep in a cool place.
A straightforward yeast-raised waffle batter that rises for an hour, or overnight with less yeast. The measurements read as 2 1/2 cups flour and, in the trailing note, 1 1/2 cups.
- The yeastA cake of compressed (fresh) yeast is usually reckoned at about 0.6 oz, roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast, i.e. one standard packet; note that cake sizes were not standardised in this period, so treat the figure as approximate. For the overnight version, a quarter cake works out at something over 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast.
- Lukewarm, not warmScald the milk to just below a simmer and cool it to about 100F before the yeast goes in. Milk much above about 115F will start to harm the yeast, so the recipe's insistence on a lukewarm liquid matters.
- Lard or butterEither works; the recipe treats them as interchangeable, and a single tablespoon is a modest amount of fat for this quantity of batter.
- Batter consistencyThe warning that thick batter makes tough waffles is the hinge of the recipe. After the rise, the batter should pour and spread on its own; if it mounds, slacken it with a few tablespoons of milk before cooking.
- Filling the iron"Fill the cool side" refers to a hinged stovetop iron that is flipped over the burner. With an electric iron, preheat fully, grease lightly the first time only, pour into the centre and close; cook until steam stops escaping, generally 3 to 5 minutes.
- The overnight batterLess yeast plus extra salt slows fermentation, and the batter must genuinely be kept cool. Modern refrigeration makes this easy: cover and refrigerate 8 to 12 hours, then stir down and let it come back to room temperature before cooking.
- YieldExpect about six to eight waffles from a standard round or square iron, serving four.
Yeast-raised waffles predate chemically leavened ones by centuries; the batter is essentially a thin bread dough poured between hot plates, and the rise builds a depth of flavour that baking powder cannot match. Compressed yeast, sold in small cakes from the late nineteenth century onward, was the ordinary household leaven of Mrs. Fryer's era, and some cookbooks of the period offered both a same-day and an overnight schedule so that a cook could set the batter after supper and have waffles ready with little morning work. The instruction to fill "the cool side" belongs to the older hinged iron, clamped in a long-handled frame and turned over the fire or set into a stove opening.