Sourdough Waffles with Pomegranate Jelly and Whipped Cream

In this inaugural post what better to talk about than breakfast.  Sunday morning found Mrs. McBugbear myself and our newest child (just 5 days old) alone for breakfast.  Thing 1 and Thing 2 were at their grandmothers so I decided to make sourdough waffles to celebrate the arrival of Thing 3.  Now good meals are all about planning and I started planning this one on Friday.

Friday Morning

I could wax nostalgic about processing a dozen pomegranates to make this jelly and how I have to repaint the kitchen from the miscellaneous squirts from the pips. But frankly I just bought a bottle of pomegranate juice.

Pomegranate Jelly:

4 cups of pomegranate juice (the original recipe was 3-1/2 +1/2 cup of water but why dilute it?)
6-1/2 cups of sugar
2 tbsp of lemon juice
1 bag of Certo Liquid Pectin.

Combine the juices, and sugar and bring to a boil.  Boil for a minute or two and add the pectin, return to a full rolling boil hold there for about 30-45 seconds.  Remove from heat and skim off any foam.  Ladle into sterilized jars and process in a boiling water bath as per any jam or jelly.  Let set up for two or three days before removing to storage.

Should produce 8-8 fluid ounce jars of jelly.

In all candor this jelly does take a couple of days to fully set up and  is not the firmest jelly I've ever made.  In the future I will likely play with the amount of pectin in the recipe. So next up in the planning, sourdough starter!

Saturday Night

In order to have enough sourdough you should feed your starter about 12 hours before breakfast.  As with all sourdoughs you have to take what I say worth a grain of salt (pardon the gluten pun).  I have an averagely active starter with low sourness.  In order to boost the sourness I did two proofs at room temperature (~70 F) of twelve hours each.  This gave me pizza dough on Saturday night (subject of a future blog) and sourdough waffles Sunday morning.  Modify the following recipe to suit your starter.

Sunday Morning

Sourdough Waffles:

2 cups of starter

2 tbsp of sugar

2 tbsp of melted butter

1/2 cup of buttermilk

2 extra large eggs

Pinch of salt

Preheat your waffle iron.  Separate the eggs, combine the all the ingredients saving only the egg whites.  Beat the egg whites until almost stiff.  Fold in the egg whites and cook as per your waffle iron's instructions.

While the first waffle is cooking make whipped cream.

Basic Whipped Cream:

1 cup of whipping cream

1 tablespoon of sugar

Whip the whipping cream and sugar at high speed until stiff peaks form in the mixture.

The timing was slightly off on the whipping cream, but then I should have set the temperature for the first waffle a bit higher.  Overall the breakfast was well received by Mrs. McBugbear and I plan on next time stealing her Scotch Whiskey Whipped Cream recipe for the waffles, or perhaps I'll use my Scotch Apple Jelly instead.

Next up, home-made pizza on a Sourdough Crust!