Baking as Deep Listening
S—’s door creaks open a few minutes after I put him to bed and his footsteps, heavy yet smooth, approach my room.
“I hear the wind a lot, mama. I really enjoy it,” he tells me as the gusts bellow outside the windows.
“Oh that’s beautiful, I’m glad.” I kiss the top of his head, take his left hand in mine and use my other hand to gently push his back towards his room.
“I love the wind. It sounds like nature organized a song just for me,” he says as he climbs the ladder back into his bed and sleeps for the rest of the night.
Pauline Oliveros conceptualized the idea of deep listening:
“a practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible.”
When I am in the kitchen, baking, I embody deep listening. I attend to the ingredients with care, welcoming them into a transformation knowing I will also be transformed with the result. I hardly ever follow a recipe, even the ones that are my own. Every new iteration of a meal is a possibility of expanding its flavour, texture and smell while expanding the limits of my own tongue and the tongues of others. The best recipes (to me) are a kind of scaffolding to let us know we will be ok within their confines and that we are also safe to explore within them—change the spice, add a different flour, balance the wet-dry ratio for our textural proclivity. Yet baking, unlike cooking, is less forgiving in its experimentation. For most recipes, you aren’t tending to them, tinkering as they cook, but rather you take a leap of faith with what you have attempted and wait to see how the ingredients make do. I prefer giving it my all and letting go; observing and listening to the alchemical surprise behind the oven window.
For windy weekends, we do our best going slow and attending to the worth of the week. With that, an easy autumnal waffle is a given in our house. These are adapted from the Love Real Food cookbook, authored by Kathryne Taylor of Cookie + Kate. There are three of us and this is enough for a light breakfast. I usually double the recipe and we indulge on waffles for hours watching the batter transmute with the baking powder lifting up the lid to make fluffy “pieces of heaven” as S— likes to call them. They do freeze very well though if you triple the recipe.
This recipe is open to experimentation. You can skip the pumpkin spice spices below and just use cinnamon or vanilla, or add cardamom. The original recipe is all oat flour. The sorghum makes this more bread-y, fluffy and hearty which I prefer. The batter should be thick but still roll off your ladle. You can also have a bit less oat flour and add coconut flour for flavour. In that case, up the milk ratio a bit so the batter is not too thick. You can also add cardamom which is my favourite. My favourite toppings are nut butter with slices of apple sprinkled with flaky sea salt and shredded coconut.
Sugar-free Gluten-Free Waffles
INGREDIENTS
• 70g oat flour
• 60g sorghum flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground flax
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 - 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ginger powder
• 1/4 - 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 3/4 to 1 cup milk of choice (I prefer oat milk as it gives it a nicer crispy colour because of the sugars in oats which also balance the lack of sugar in the recipe, but any milk will do)
• 5 tbsp melted coconut oil or olive oil
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tbsp apple sauce or date paste
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 10 - 15 drops of stevia* (optional if you want the sweet kick, but I don’t miss it)
INSTRUCTIONS
In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: flours, baking powder, salt, flax, and spices.
In a larger bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients: milk, oil, eggs, apple sauce, vanilla and stevia.
Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Stir with a spoon until just combined. Some lumps are ok. Let the batter rest for 10 minutes so the flour has time to soak up the moisture. Turn on your waffle iron to preheat to your desired setting
Stir the batter again. Pour batter onto the heated waffle iron. It should cover the center and most of the main surface area. Close the lid lightly. Once the waffle is deeply golden and crisp, serve on a plate and eat. Don’t stack your waffles on top of each other or they will get soggy.
Repeat with remaining batter. Serve waffles with people and toppings you love!
—october 2021