How to make scones
First, put on Modest Mouse's "This is a long drive for someone with
nothing to think about." It's a good album, noisy and nice to bake
to.
Realize the kitchen is a
mess. Clean the kitchen. Not too thoroughly, but enough to get some
stuff out of the way so you have some room to back in.
Pull out The Tassajara Bread Book, flip through it and find the
scone recipe.
Realize you don't have any cream. Put a hat on
-- it's cold out there! you'll catch your death! -- pause the
cd, and walk down to QFC. Pick up some cream and some ice cream -- you'll want it when you're
noding later -- and some butter that's on sale.
Once you're back, hit 'play' on the cd player and resume looking at
the bread book. Pretty weird recipe. Doesn't look quite right.
Wing it.
Pull this out of your cupboards:
- 3.5 cups of flour (mix half wheat, half white if you like)
- 1.5 tsp baking powdah
- 3 tsp sugah
- Some herbs of some sort. How about rosemary in one batch and basil
in another batch? Sounds good.
Pull this stuff out of your fridge:
- 1 egg
- 1 cup half cream, half milk -- or all cream, or all milk,
depending on how you want to do things.
- 1/4 cup buttah
Beat the egg and cream and or
milk
together in a smallish bowl. Mix all the dry stuff (minus the herbs)
together in a larger bowl. Pour the wet into the dry, and mix
thoroughly. The protodough should be kind of sticking together,
but not doing too good a job at it (ie, there ought to be little bits at
the bottom that won't stick in with the rest of the dough) Now melt
the butter (the microwave or the stovetop, makes no difference) and
put a bit at a time while kneading the dough. When you've got that
all mixed in, add a little bit of flour if it's too wet. If it's too
dry...um, don't make it too dry, okay?
Now get your bread board (you don't have a bread board? How about a
chopping block? No? What about the slide out chopping block underneath your counter? No? I really can't
help you) and lightly flour it. Put the dough down, and put some of
your herb of choice on top. I used about a tablespoon of basil, and it
could've used more; a tablespoon and a half of rosemary was just about
right. Knead the dough until the herbs are distributed well, then
roll the dough out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut
it into triangles, and lay it out on a greased baking sheet.
Cook 'em until they're done. Mine took about 14 minutes at 375° F;
that's an electric oven, so gas people may want to adjust up, and
everyone who makes these should watch them. When they get a bit brown
on the vertices, and are hard all over, take them out. Let them cool a
few minutes before you snarf a few down -- they're hot, fool!
Now, those are pretty good, but you could alter the recipe really easily to make sweeter plain scones (double the sugar, lose the herbs), or mix different things in (I bet fresh herbs would be a lot better than the dried ones I used). Experiment. It worked for me.