Hi!

How long does it take to bake waffles?

A couple of minutes with an electric waffle iron.

But, is it really long enough to venture far from the iron?

Only for a short period of time. I had an (old!) GE waffle iron that
had both a thermostat control knob (it could make more than waffles)
and an indicator light. Toward the end of its life, the indicator
became somewhat inaccurate, and it was necessary to run the unit
through more than one cycle to get properly made waffles out of it.

I always brushed the griddles down with oil to keep the waffles from
sticking, and that was good enough to let me open it up to check on
the progress the waffles were making.

I suppose the thermostat was just out of adjustment if anything. I
almost tried adjusting it despite the stern notice on top of the
shielded box it was in. But the unit had other problems (in
particular, it had filled up with this hard to remove grease over the
years) and it seemed like one of the elements was getting ready to
burn out, so I replaced the whole unit with a newer one. It had to be
at least 30 years old.

William