Everything you need to know about Belgian waffles

In the globalization of world cuisine, there are many foods people define as originating from one place when they actually come from somewhere else. Relief is to find at least one food bearing the name of the country where it comes from and is particularly popular in it.

A brilliant example of this is the Belgian waffle – known as gaufre or gauffre in French and wafel, waffel or suikerwaffel in Flemish.

To make matters even more complicated, it turns out that there is not only one type of Belgian waffle. There are at least two basic varieties, and perhaps more, depending on where you are, and the differences in the types of waffles are only regional.

Inevitably like most civilizations, the history of the wafer was rooted in the Neolithic, and later in the Middle Ages. The wafer’s ancestor is a pancake made of ground cereal, cooked on hot stones. Then the pancake turned on the other side to roast.

It is not known when people began to process metal, to whom it was the idea of replacing the stone with an iron plate, and when it was found that cooking would be faster with 2 heated iron plates on either side of one and also time.

The first sources for waffle recipes date from China over 2000 years ago. The method of baking and ingredients were, like modern waffles, but with added herbs in the mixture.

In the early Middle Ages, the cast-iron slabs between which the waffles were roasted, were mostly smooth, carved on them and other religious images. Wafreths were made by the monks in the monasteries in honor of the saints. A little later the monks began selling them outside the church during religious holidays and liturgies. Gradually, this type of cake begins to enter households as well.

Later in the 13th century in France these pancakes were known as “oublies” or “pan d’juif”. At that time in Europe the word “wafer” does not exist yet.
Oblayers or “oublies” are the real predecessors of modern waffles.

Very often pancakes were shaped like sticks or cones. For the lovers of the effects – the aristocrats, the blacksmiths produced cast-iron plates with different images – stuccoes, stylized flowers – a true work of art.
The waffle machine was a symbol of high status in society, and the waffles were present in the feasts given by the aristocracy.

The waffle machine, as we know it today, appear only when the blacksmith made cast-iron plates in the form of a honeycomb, so the waffles were called “waffle” – “gaufre” (waffles in English) comes from walfre. Flemish “wafel” means at that time a “piece of honey” – asks honey. Nobody knows for sure who designed it first, but what we know is that the waffle was a pair of iron plates with hinges, long handles because they were cooking over an open flame.