Week 4: How not to make Gauffres the Liege

Welcome to Week 4 of Waffles Across America, wherein I aimed too high and promptly ruined a perfectly good batch of ingredients. Let me start by saying this:

If you don't have a stand mixer and you suffer from RSI in your wrists, a bad back or carpal tunnel syndrome: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME. Trust me.

Now, where was I. Oh yes! Ruining waffles. So, the recipe was recommended by my friend @Origamislayer, who deserves all the blame, of course, but also many kudos. Because, let's face it: Those waffles right there look amazing. And the ingredients are all good, so on the day they're done right, I bet they are tasty as anything. Alas, today was not that day.

To the kitchen!

Ingredients
6 tablespoons warm milk (no hotter than 110°F)
1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar 

2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 1/2 cups (230 grams) bread flour, sifted
1 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 medium egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup (4 oz/ 113g) unsalted butter, at slightly cooler than room temperature
140 grams turbinado sugar, or pearl sugar if you choose

Notes: The closest to 'turbinado or pearl sugar' I could get was demerara. Also, I didn't know whether to use white or brown bread flour, so I went with white. I used semi-skimmed milk because I had it in the house. Not sure if that was one of my many mistakes?

I bet that cow is judging me.

Method
I followed the recipe to the letter; thusly:

Dissolve the sugar in the warm milk; then add the yeast. Make sure that the milk is not too hot, lest it kill the yeast instead of promoting its growth. Place a plate or some kind of cover on top of the bowl with the milk, sugar and yeast. Set aside for about five minutes. When you check on it, the yeast should have bubbled up, looking light brown and spongy. 

I heated the milk for exactly ten seconds in the microwave and tested the temperature with my pinky. It felt lukewarm. I figured that was the intention. Stirred in the sugar, then the yeast, which basically clumped immediately. I stirred the stuff like a berserker until it looked smooth and set it aside. When I looked at it 5 minutes later, it had indeed bubbled and turned brown. Alas! When I poured it into the dry ingredients, half the milk came out on its own, and the yeast was a great big blob of stuff. Big mistake when you don't have a mixer.

Meanwhile, mix the sifted bread flour with the cinnamon, vanilla extract, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Pour in the yeast mixture; then add the whole egg and egg yolk. Mix on medium speed until it is fully combined. The dough will be yellow and stiff, yielding only slightly to a poke. Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest in a warm place for about thirty minutes.

"Mix on medium speed," ha! Oh how I wish I had a stand mixer. I kneaded and kneaded and pushed and squished until my wrists started screaming insults at me and I had to stop. Despite the fact the dough was far from yellow, I thought I'd not done too badly, considering:

Old Man Willow in the house.

Beat in the butter piece by piece; you do not have to wait for the prior piece to be fully incorporated before adding the next. When the dough has incorporated about half of the butter, the mixture will be like a very thick, somewhat broken-up paste. If you keep engaging the mixer on medium-high speed, the dough will eventually become a cohesive whole, looking smoother and more feeling more elastic. Scrape the sides of the bowl if needed.
Kneading very gently, incorporate the sugar crystals just enough to get them evenly distributed. Work quickly so as not to soften the buttery dough too much.
Divide the dough into a dozen equal pieces, gently forming them into balls.

This nearly broke me. Working 114g of butter into the toughest dough I've ever made was damn hard. I don't think I'll get much use out of my hands tomorrow. But! I somehow succeeded in getting it all in and making balls. Hurrr. Balls. They looked nothing like the ones on the website...

Not like they should look at all.

...because, I reckon, I forgot to do this: Place the balls of dough on a cutting board in a warmish place for fifteen minutes or so.

And then I cooked the buggers. The first batch burned into crisp, black discs of awful - all that sugar! - and went straight to the bin. The second lot came out slightly less blackened and looking like waffles. Cooking time: 3 minutes (down from 4).

Look! Waffles.

I'd like to finish on this here high note, but in the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you a few things about these waffles:

 - They're way too sweet. I wonder if it's down to the type of sugar I used. Must find pearl sugar for the next round. The sugar on the outside, whilst providing that Belgian glaze, is too crunchy. Also it burns black real quick.
- They didn't turn solid in the waffle iron - they were done, but they fell apart when I tried to lift them out.
- Conversely, as soon as they cooled down a bit they turned into an approximation of Dwarf Bread. But they still crumbled really easily! Hey, Chemistry? What am I doing wrong?
- They're not soft, they're hard, like shortbread biscuits. #sadmouth

Thus. If anyone needs some sticky, rock-hard throwing weapons that dissolve in mid-flight, I have just the thing!

Also good for masonry.

So there you have it. They're edible, but nothing like Gauffres the Liege, and not something you'd write home about. Unless you're me.

I know the yeast thing went wrong. Also, next time I'm using the right sugar, whole milk, AND A STAND MIXER. With a dough hook. If anyone who reads this has spotted any other obvious mistakes in my approach, will you let me know? Ta. :)

Next week, I will find something easier. Maybe cornmeal waffles. Or potato waffles. Or something with almond milk, because the very concept is intriguing to me.