VEGANISED RECIPE: Liège waffles made with yeasted dough (Luikse wafels)

My parents have recently bought a new panini-maker/tosti-maker/waffle iron, and this is the first time in my life that I have actually owned an appliance to make waffles. Needless to say, I immediately went along and made different types of waffles. I found out that there are two types of Belgian waffles:

Waffles from Brussels: light batter made with whipped egg whites
Waffles from Liège: sweeter and heavier dough made with yeast

Since I wanted to make vegan waffles and did not want to work with aquafaba this time (I didn’t have a purpose for the chickpeas), I chose to make waffles from Liège for this recipe. I found a recipe online in Dutch that I thought could be easily veganised and went along.

The recipe I based this on can be found HERE, but is in Dutch. I also modified the recipe instructions, because the original recipe requires you to make a dough starter with a quarter of your flour, but this yielded a way to dry mix for me, needing me to add more liquid. This caused problems when adding all the ingredients together, because now the mix was too wet. Therefore, I changed some small things about the way the dough is made.

I also replaced the eggs in this recipe by applesauce. This egg-replacer for me is perfect because I always have applesauce in the house, and it’s tastier than chia seeds. The idea for this egg-replacer is not mine, but comes from the youtuber and blogger Gemma, from bigger bolder baking. Her egg-replacement chart can be found HERE

This recipe takes a bit longer than the original recipe states, I think closer to 1.5 hours than half an hour. This is because it involves two rises; the dough starter and the dough balls. After that the waffles need to be baked in batches, depending on the size of your iron of course.

Anyway, a bit of an effort, but worth it in my opinion!

Ingredients for 6 waffles:

125 grams of flour
25 mL of water (a little bit less than 2 tbsp), lukewarm
1 tsp. of yeast
3 tbsp. of sugar, I used a mix of vanilla sugar and light brown sugar
A pinch of cinnamon
A pinch of salt
3 tbsp. of applesauce (or another egg-replacer)
50 grams of margarine, room temperature or melted but not hot to the touch (I used Blue Band, seeing that recently they have made their margarine 100% plant based, Yay!)

Instructions:

Sift your flower into a bowl
Add your water and yeast to a separate bowl, adding around 1.5 tbsp. of your sifted flower and stirring until a thick paste is formed; this is your dough starter
Let your dough starter rest in a warm place until doubled in size, around half an hour
Add all the other ingredients to the bowl with the flower, and add in your dough starter
Mix this until you can knead it, it will be wet, but not too sticky!
Divide into 6 balls (a little bit les than 50 grams each), place onto a flowered surface and let rise again for 30-40 minutes, until they have puffed up
Heat your waffle iron and use a spatula to scoop your dough balls (which are quite soft) onto the iron, close it and let cook until brown; I left mine in for 5.5 minuts
Remove your waffles with a spatula, serve with sugar, some applesauce and some vegan whipped cream
Enjoy!

TIP: the vegan whipped cream I use is by Soyatoo and I really like it. It is firm but low in calories. However, it does have a slight coconutty taste, but I find I got used to that pretty quickly.