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Wednesday 23 November 2011

The Waffle Project

I'm a big fan of waffles because, they are the best way conceived by man to consume maple syrup, aside from drinking it right out of the bottle.  As a Canadian it's my civic duty to consume at least 1.867 litres of maple syrup annually (it's in the constitution, look it up if you don't believe me) and so I am embarking on the waffle project to better understand how this novel breakfast food may help us all do our civic duty to suck the maple trees dry!

To make this a bit more systematic and thus deserving of the "Project" moniker, I have mapped out 2 primary axes that define what I call the waffle-space
  • X = Doughy vs. fluffy
  • Y = Sweet vs. savory
There are multiple other characteristics crispy vs. fluffy,  round vs. square, small pocket vs large, to name just a few but these tend to be functions of your iron more than the batter so I'm leaving them out of this exercise for the time being.

As seen below, I have taken the liberty to pre-populate the waffle-space with a few well-known examples so that we have a solid set of benchmarks:

The goal of this project is not to make a definitive selection as to the best waffle but rather to explore as much waffle-space as possible by trying different recipes.  I will populate the waffle space as we go and then you can choose your preferred waffle based on personal taste.  I love Wandas waffles both for their doughy/savoriness and for their propensity to locate their stores close to Toronto's exotic dance clubs (that's just good business sense!) but I recognize that others may love the densely sweet concoctions available from the good folks at Waffle-House or the more floury versions that come from Bisquick.  To each their own, I'm just here to help you navigate this complex and interesting landscape.

Because she's a fellow Canadian, I'm starting with Shari's soft waffle recipe followed by her hard waffle recipe and from there we'll see where the adventure takes us.  If anyone has suggestions for recipes, please let me know and I'll put them on the list and then map them into waffle-space for quick comparison. 

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