Sourdough Scones

I love sourdough bread, so when I stumbled across this recipe for Sourdough Scones, I just had to give it a try. Especially since I had just started experimenting with my own sourdough starter.

Recipe found on AllRecipes.com: click here

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon apple pie spice
• 1/3 cup cold butter
• 1 1/4 cups sourdough starter
• 2 tablespoons milk (optional)
• coarse sugar, for garnish (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Whisk together the flour, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, sugar, and apple pie spice in a mixing bowl. Cut in the butter with a knife or pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the sourdough starter and mix by hand to form a soft dough.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 4 pieces. Pat or roll one piece of dough into a 1/2-inch thick round. Cut it into 4 wedge-shaped pieces and place the scones on the prepared baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough. Brush the tops of the scones with milk and sprinkle with coarse sugar, if desired.
4. Bake until the scones just start to turn golden, 12 to 15 minutes.

Nutritional Information 

Amount Per Serving  Calories: 171 | Total Fat: 4.3g | Cholesterol: 10mg

The Process:

My spice mixture (I did not have Apple Pie Spice).
1/4 tsp each Ground Ginger, Nutmeg and Cloves, 1/2 tsp of Ground Cinnamon.

My ingredients, ready to go.

Dry ingredients and butter mixed.

1/4 of the dough that was made from this recipe.

Flatten out 1/4 of the dough on a lightly floured counter.

Cut the 1/4 of dough into fourths (total recipe makes 16 scones).

3/4 of the recipe.

Coming out of the oven, lightly browned.

Comments/Tips:

So I did not have apple pie spice. Instead, I concocted my own spice mix, something like a pumpkin pie spice, which turned out well. I mixed Ginger, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Ground Cloves, approximately 1/4 tsp of Ginger, Nutmeg and Cloves, and 1/2 tsp of Cinnamon. I could have added a little bit more spice, but this amount gave a light spicy flavor that did not overpower the scones.

Results:

I would definitely make these scones again. They were lightly spicy and tasty as a standalone snack or with tea or coffee. I could see adding dried fruit or different spices in order to change things up, but if you have excess sourdough starter, this is a great recipe to use it on.

French Bread

French Bread

I am always in search of a good French Bread recipe. As far as those go, this one wasn't bad. It was close to store-bought, and quick and easy to make. 

The Recipe:

6 cups bread flour

2 1/2 (0.25 oz) packages active dry yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 cups warm water (110 degrees)

1 tbsp cornmeal

1. Combine 2 cups flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl or KitchenAid mixer. Stir in the 2 cups of warm water and mix well. Add the rest of the flour until you get a dough that clears the sides of the bowl but sticks slightly to the bottom.

2. Knead about 8 to 10 minutes or until dough is stiff and elastic. Spray a bowl with cooking spray or coat with oil and place dough in bowl to rise, flipping the dough or spraying it with oil before you cover it with plastic wrap. Allow to double, about 30-40 minutes.

3. Deflate dough and divide in two. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Shape two halves into a baguette, pinching the seams together, using bit of water if necessary to obtain a proper seal. For tips on how to shape a baguette: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Forming-and-Baking-Baguettes/Detail.aspx.

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and/or sprinkle with cornmeal. Seam side down, put the loaves on the pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to nearly double, about 40 minutes.

5. With a razor blade, make 3 or 4 diagonal slashes on each loaf about 1/4 inch deep. Bake at 375ºF for 35-40 minutes. The bread is done when it is golden brown on top and sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack.

The Process:

Step 1: knead the dough. I used a KitchenAid electric mixer.

Step 2: dough kneaded and rounded into a ball to rise.

Step 2: Dough put into a greased bowl for rising.

Step 3: Dough shaped and proofed. 

The finished product. In order to get the scoring on the top, I've found that even sharp knives aren't sharp enough. Get some razor blades and slash those across the tops of the loaves quickly. The cuts are clean and don't tear at the dough.

Results:


I found this to be a pleasant bread that would go with all sorts of meals. I tested it out with beef stew, and it was perfect for sopping up the liquid. The dough was easy to work with and, as far as bread recipes go, quick to make, taking around two and a half to three hours from start to finish.

Vanilla Bean & Mascarpone Scones

Vanilla Bean & Mascarpone Scone
Served with Mascarpone and a sliced Strawberry.

Mmmmm...Decadent and light, these are scones that complement tea in a lovely way. I try not to make them very often, because one is never enough. The vanilla flavor offers sweetness to the otherwise not-quite-sweet taste of mascarpone, and if you serve with a strawberry and whipped cream in the middle...talk about a perfect afternoon tea.






The Recipe:

I use vanilla bean paste in lots of recipes
that call for vanilla extract. This Madagascar
Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste is tasty!

Adapted from Genevieve Knights' Scones.


200 g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or 1 scraped vanilla bean
200 g mascarpone
1/4 cup water




Instructions:


Preheat the oven to 450ºF. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt to combine. With a wooden spoon, add the sugar, vanilla and mascarpone. Using a wooden spoon or a fork, work the mascarpone into the dry ingredients until you have even-sized clumps. Sprinkle over the water then knead until a dough is just formed.


Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll dough to an even 1 cm thickness. With a 5 cm diameter cookie cutter, cut as many scones as you can from the flattened dough and place on a parchment-paper covered baking tray.


When you have gotten as many rounds from the dough as possible, ball the remains of the dough together and "knead" just enough to reattach the cuttings of dough. Spread to 1 cm thickness and cut as many rounds as you can again. Repeat until you have a racquetball sized ball of dough, then split into two, ball each half and flatten into the final two scones (they will look a little different).


Bake at 450ºF until lightly golden on top (about 6-8 minutes).
Allow to cool on a cooling rack. 


Serve with toppings of your choice.

The Process:

The ingredients all weighed out.

The consistency of the dough after mixing in the mascarpone.

Added 1/4 cup water, plus a little drizzle extra, as the dough was too dry to stick together with just 1/4 cup water.

Just out of the oven. Beautiful!

Lightly Golden

Notes:
I made my scones slightly larger (I only got 11 scones out of this recipe, but it says it makes 15 servings). 


My scalloped-edge cookie cutter started to stick on the dough after the first one, so I dusted the edges with flour to keep it from sticking any more. 


Since I'm in the U.S. and my oven tells me temperatures in Fahrenheit, I heated my oven to 425ºF and baked my scones until they were light gold on top, about 12 minutes. I could have heated it to 450ºF and had them bake a little bit faster.


I didn't have whipped cream and was too lazy to go get some, so I spread a little layer of extra mascarpone in the middle of the scone and layered a strawberry on top. What a decadent little sandwich!


Results: 


This is the second time I've made these scones, and I love them just as much now as I did the first time. Definitely a recipe to try. My suggestion: enjoy alongside some coffee or tea.

Scottish Oat & Treacle Scones

Scottish Oat & Treacle Scones

Scones originated in Scotland, and are traditionally oat based. The first scones were unleavened, round and flat, usually scored into four or six pieces and baked on a griddle, only to be cut afterwards. 


With this history of the scone in mind, I decided that I should try a "traditional" scone recipe for this blog.







Scottish Oat & Treacle Scones 
Source: Scones by Genevieve Knights

Golden Syrup, aka Treacle

The Ingredients:


150g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
150g rolled oats
75mls double cream
75mls milk
75g treacle (golden syrup)


The Instructions:


Preheat oven to 450ºF. 


In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the rolled oats and set aside. 


Separately, whisk the cream, milk and treacle together until smooth, heating if necessary to allow the treacle to integrate. 


Add the liquid mixture to the flour. Mix until almost combined.


On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough 2 or 3 times to bring together, careful not to overknead. Split the dough into two pieces and flatten each into a circle about 1 cm thick.


Divide each circle into six triangular pieces. Place on a parchment-paper lined baking tray. 


Bake at 450ºF for about 10 minutes until they have browned and risen slightly.


The Process:

75 g of treacle worked out to be about three tablespoons. It's much stickier than I imagined, and in order to more easily whisk the milk and treacle, I microwaved the cream, milk and treacle for about 15 seconds. After that, I was able to quickly dissolve the treacle in the milk.

Adding the milk, cream and treacle mixture to the dry ingredients.

Doesn't look very appetizing right here, but this is the loosely combined scone dough. It should not be quite together when turned out onto the counter. You want to avoid over-mixing scone dough, or the scone will turn hard.

Dough after 2-3 very gentle kneads. It had the tendency to stick to the counter, so make sure your counter is well floured. It's not particularly sticky for your hands though.

Dough divided with my handy dough cutter. I like to use this tool for making scones and scraping dough off counters. 

This recipe makes 12 rather small scones. Here, the dough is raw.

Baked at 450ºF for 10 minutes. They do not rise a lot, so look for them to be browning on the surface.

My Notes & Tips:

In order to better whisk in the treacle to the milk, I microwaved the milk, cream and treacle together for about 15 seconds. This was just long enough to take the cream mixture from cold to cool, and allowed me to whisk the treacle in without any problems at all.

I used whole wheat pastry flour, and the recipe turned out great. It wasn't too heavy like a lot of recipes can get with whole wheat flour.

The dough is just a little bit sticky, and it tends to come off in clumps of oats, so make sure the countertop and your hands are lightly floured.

A dough cutter is useful, but not necessary for this recipe. I like to use one instead of a knife to cut the dough in half and to cut into triangles. The recipe indicates 6-8 minutes at 220C, but I found 10 minutes at 450ºF was the perfect amount of time to bake.

Results:

I really liked these. They are crunchy from the oats with just a hint of sweetness from the treacle. A delicious combination, eat alongside coffee or tea, plain, with clotted cream or with a little drizzle of treacle over the top. This would be perfect for a light breakfast or afternoon tea! Enjoy!