Sourdough Scones

Scones, I have a love-hate relationship with scones really. A good warm scone slathered with butter and jelly or dare I say a pot of clotted cream is better than most things in the world of baked goods. However, the disappointment that accompanies a dry sandpaper scone that crumbles in your mouth, or even worse at your touch is such a tremendous letdown. It is baked goods that fall into these difficult categories that carry a sense of challenge and excitement for bakers like me.

Though a dry, tasteless scone is easy to spot through the glass of a bakery case, a dry scone recipe is a little more difficult to uncover in the mass of Pinterest recipes that claim to be “The Very Best Blueberry Scone” or “The Perfect, Never Dry Scone.”

At The Flour Girl we feature 2 different scones, every week, a sweet and savory variety and they are some of our best-selling items. The very first flavor of this scone that I made, back when I was baking at St. Peter’s Church, was the Raspberry White Chocolate. The thing that caught my interest was the addition of sourdough discard of course, and though the recipe has evolved over the past few years, the smell of those raspberry white chocolate scones fresh out of the oven still makes my knees buckle.

Like all good Flour Girl recipes, it starts with some core, high-quality ingredients, and our own sourdough starter. We also try to use the best ingredients to create the highest quality product and always recommend King Arthur Flour, fresh raspberries, and either Hershey’s or Ghirardelli White Chocolate Chips.

Scones are a tricky baked good, which is why they often go so wrong in unpracticed or impatient hands, and the hands are what sets them apart. What ruins a scone is overwork and mixers so at TFG we make our scones by hand, every one of them.

Our recipe begins by mixing the mix, eggs, and sourdough starter in the base of a bowl, if you are set on using a mixer, this is your time to shine, but truly a whisk will work just as well. In a separate, larger bowl, add all your dry ingredients and mix. Next up we need to deal with the butter, and this is the next spot where things tend to go wrong. When you bake a scone, you want the butter to melt into the dough and not out of it, which is why it needs to be in small chunks when it gets mixed in.

To achieve this, we use very cold butter, roughly cut into cubes. Through those into the base of a food processor or in the base of a bowl if you are using a pastry cutter. Cover it with some of the flour mixture, doesn’t need to be an exact amount, and gently pulse it until the butter forms pea-sized balls. Once your butter is all “pea-ed” up you can add it back into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Go ahead and throw in whatever flavor your scone is at this point and lightly toss it into the flour. Now add the liquid and CAREFULLY mix it by hand trying your best to keep the butter whole and the keeping the fruit as intact as possible.

Once everything is incorporated into a somewhat shaggy, doughy mass shape the dough into a square and cut out your pieces. We use biscuit cutters for consistency but at home, eyeballing it works just fine. Now these scones could go right into the oven, and they bake up nice and delicious. Do you remember how I said you want the butter to melt into the scone and not out of it? The very best way to do that is to freeze them first. Freezing the scones and baking them directly from frozen make sure that the butter doesn’t melt until it hits that hot oven, which makes an amazing, almost biscuit-like flaky texture. So, we freeze our scones, tray them up before baking, brush them with a little heavy cream (or egg wash, depending on the flavor), and pop those right in the 325-degree oven for about 30 minutes until the internal temperature reads 194 degrees.

Once they are slightly cooled, but not completely, dip them in a little glaze of powdered sugar, vanilla, and water or heavy cream if you are feeling crazy. I won’t say these are “The Best Scones on The Internet” but they are certainly my favorite and since we sell thousands of them every month, I would say that our customers tend to agree.

Scone Recipe

1080g King Arthur All Purpose Flour

45g baking powder

1 cup sugar

1/2 Tbl salt

250g butter

2 cups buttermilk

1.5 cups discard starter

3 eggs