Sourdough Scones

Earlier this month I was given the most amazing opportunity to attend one of Vanessa Kimbell's sourdough courses.

Although, for a whole range of reasons, I have not made my own sourdough bread yet, I have been very careful to keep my sourdough starter alive.  In doing so I get an amount of old starter to use in my baking - you may have read about my Cinnamon Coffee Cake.

Mr R loves scones and since I hadn't made scones for such a long time I thought that they would be the perfect thing to make with this week's old sourdough starter.  I used Vanessa's recipe to make them.

I followed the recipe except where it called for buttermilk or soured milk. I had some sour cream in the fridge so substituted that for the buttermilk.

I only had a large cookie cutter handy so the scones were rather large but they were light and lovely making Mr R very happy to have with his cup of tea!

The sourdough scones were lovely and light but didn't last long in this household.  Will have to make another batch soon.

Here is Vanessa's recipe for Sourdough Scones:-

Prep time: 10 minutes Cooking time: 20 minutes Freeze: Yes

Ingredients:

• 225g organic self-raising flour
• 75g slightly salted butter, chilled, cut in small pieces
• 50g Fairtrade sugar
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• 125ml buttermilk (but ordinary full fat milk is also fine) 
• 100g of unrefreshed starter
• 1tbs fresh lemon juice
• 3–4 tbsp milk
• Extra flour, for dusting
• sugar, for sprinkling
• 1 egg, beaten with a tablespoon of milk for the glaze
• *Fresh cream & raspberry jam to serve

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180?C/gas mark 4.

2. Put the flour, butter, salt and sugar into a bowl. Mix well. Make a well in the centre. In a large jug whisk the sourdough starter and the buttermilk and lemon juice together then pour into the centre of your dry mix. Bring the mixture together to form a dough. If the dough seems a bit too dry, add a drop more milk slowly just a fee drops at a time, if it is too sticky then add a dusting of flour to handle it more easily.

3. Turn out onto a floured work surface and use your hands to form a 2.5cm round. Cut out shapes from this, depending on your preference, and put them on a baking tray.

4. Glaze the scones with the beaten egg and bake for 18–20 minutes and sprinkle with sugar.

5. Cool on a wire rack. If you want to freeze these scones, do so as soon as they are cool.

Note: Scones are normally best enjoyed the same day, but these are just as lovely the next day.  Keep wrapped in a linen cloth.

I made these scones out of choice and was not asked to make them.  As usual all opinions and photos are my own.