Recipe

Step 1: Mix together in a big bowl the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat pastry flour, white sugar, baking powder and sea salt.

Step 2: Cut up the butter into tiny pieces. Use a knife or pastry cutter to chop the butter up into small cubes, no more than 1/4″. Dump this into the bowl of dry ingredients, and put the whole bowl in the fridge for 30 minutes. You want everything to be nice and cold before you do the next step, so don’t rush it.

Step 3: Preheat your oven to 375°F for about 30 minutes with a rack in the middle of your oven.

Step 4: Take that cold bowl out of the fridge, and cut the butter into the flour with a spatula, bench knife, pastry cutter or your fingers, breaking it up into small pieces. You want all of the butter to be no bigger than peas, and most of it more like coarse sand.

Step 5: Fold in the filling ingredients of your choice. Toss in the special stuff and mix until everything’s dispersed evenly.

Step 6: Mix in the cream. Now pour in heavy cream, and mush it up with your hands. You can replace 1/3 cup of the heavy cream with crème fraîche. This dough should feel pretty darn stiff, very similar to playdough.

Step 7: Once all the cream is absorbed, turn the dough out onto a floured counter and fold the dough over on itself repeatedly for about 30 seconds. Not too much, just enough to give it the strength to stand up in the oven.

Step 8: Gently shape the scones. Use nonstick spray or put a piece of parchment paper on your baking sheet. Gently grab about 1/4 cup of scone dough, and lightly form it into a ball. Place each scone on your baking sheet, with about 3″ of space around each one. They are going to spread out, so don’t crowd these suckers! If you’re doing sweet scones, brush their tops with cream and sprinkle with sugar.

Step 9: Bake. Set your timer for 10 minutes and take a peek, but likely they’ll need another 8 – 12 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when their peaks and perimeters are starting to turn dark brown.

Step 10: Once they’re done, take them out and let them cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then use a spatula or bench knife to move them to a cooling rack.

Note:
Scones have a lot of butter in them. The tricky thing with this is that your hands are very warm compared to the butter, and they will make it melt. You don’t want that; you want the butter to stay cool and solid throughout the whole process, right up until it goes into the oven and performs its magic. Put it in the fridge.

See more recipes from Josey Baker Bread.

Reprinted with permission from Josey Baker Bread (2014, Raincoast Books).