SCONES

Day 68 - 67° - Cloudy (sun just went in) - Spring Meadows Park
Day 67 - 61° - Sunny, slightly windy - Spring Meadows Park

What is a scone? It is a light, biscuit like quick bread made of oatmeal, wheat flour, barley meal, or the like. The key word is light and cold butter is key. The butter can come right out of the fridge and mixed with the batter, but in the workshop I attended at the Mid-Atlantic Bed and Breakfast conference, Debbie Anderson used “frozen” butter which she shaved ahead of time.

I copied this paragraph from Debbie' site to explain the cold butter theory : to paraphrase Lauren Chattman (The Baking Answers Book)--the point in using chilled butter is so that it doesn't melt during dough assembly. What you want is for the butter to melt in the oven--freeing up space and creating minute steam pockets of expanding gases which aid in the rise of the dough. If the butter melts before you get to the dough to the oven, you lose those pockets of gas expanding, leaving you with a denser baked product.

Who would believe it is this scientific to make a delicious scone. If not, the scone will easily become a stone.

Debbie's business is Victorian House Scones. She sells mixes that have been perfected over the years, and some innkeepers in the workshop say the mixes are fabulous. Here is the site if you are interested: http://www.victorianhousescones.com/

I'll let you know how my first batch of scones turns out.