One of the coolest tricks I’ve picked up in the past few years is working with a sourdough starter. I live in San Francisco. San Francisco sourdough is iconic. I’ve been cooking professionally for about 15 years now. Why the hell did I wait so long?

One of the things about cooks that a lot of people don’t realize is that we don’t like following directions. The whole concept of having to do research and find a recipe, and then follow that recipe is something that causes me anxiety. I was under the false impression that generating a natural sourdough starter would need to involve research, and adherence to specific instructions.

Not really. I understand that it’s not like this everywhere, but in San Francisco, if you mix flour and water, and leave it somewhere for awhile, it becomes alive. Sometimes, if your jar of yeast colony ends up with a bunch of liquid on top of it, you need to throw away the liquid and add a little more flour and water. It’s basically as easy as keeping a plant alive. Which isn’t totally easy, but manageable for most adults.

So, once you have a real starter, you just keep adding scoops of flour and a little lukewarm water and stirring it up. Pretty soon you end up with more than you need. You have to start cooking with it.

Mostly, you’re supposed to make sourdough bread. You basically just add some more flour and water to form a dough, add a little salt, then knead it to get some gluten going, and let it sit there until it gets poofy. Then you bake it. If you get it wet and steamy as it bakes, you can get that crunchy sourdough crust.

But you might get tired of sourdough bread. I got tired of it. Maybe moreso I got tired of kneading. Maybe someday I’ll reach the level of personal development at which you enjoy kneading. For now, I just think it’s super boring. But with my starter blowing up out of it’s jar, I had to find some ways to use up the overflow.

After trying a bunch of different sourdough starter recipes, both good and bad, I discovered sourdough waffles.

For the tangy acidity of a good San Francisco sourdough, paired with the sweet complexity of quality maple syrup, there are no words.