Best scone recipe | How to make scones | Jamie Oliver (2024)

FAQs

What to avoid when making scones? ›

1. Flour. Know what flour you should use! We recommend using all-purpose flour.

If you are using baking soda, you will want to use buttermilk, an acidic ingredient that will react with the leavener to help them rise. On the other hand, if you use cream or milk, you'll want to use baking powder because it combines the acid needed with baking soda all in one complete powder.

Scones are considered ”quick” breads since they are leavened with baking powder or baking soda and cream of tartar. They may be plain, but often have a wide variety of sweet or savory ingredients. Scones should be golden on the outside and tender and flaky inside, like a slightly sweetened biscuit.

Form the dough into a ball and cover with clingfilm and rest for 30-60 minutes. This rest period relaxes the dough so that when you roll and cut out the scones the mixture doesn't spring back.

Sweet scones and cheese scones have an egg added to enrich them. Both will rise but whatever scone you make its important that they are handled lightly and not rolled too thinly. If you haven't seen it, we show them being made in the cookery school.

My scones have a dense, heavy texture and poor volume

You may have used too little raising agent or over handled the dough before it was baked. The oven may have been too cool.

For example, if you substitute oil for butter or margarine, you can significantly reduce the amount of saturated fat in your baked goods. This streamlined recipe for Light Scones uses just 3 tablespoons of canola oil, which contains a fraction of the saturated fat found in butter or margarine.

Why are my scones not fluffy? ›

Many quick scone recipes recommend self-raising flour, which contains a leavening agent that helps achieve the desired rise. Without this leavening agent, scones can become dense and heavy. However, you can opt for plain flour and add the appropriate amount of baking powder to your mix.

As well as the raising agent in the flour, baking powder adds a bit of lift to scones. Baking powder is a convenient choice as it is a ready-mixed leavening agent, generally made of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar (usually some cornflour too).

British scones are usually lightly sweetned and contain fruit like currants or berries. Scottish scones are often closer to a biscuit and are made with buttermilk, though some Scottish grandmothers will swear you should only use sour milk.

Biscuits and scones have the same British ancestor, but the early Southern colonists' version included butter, lard, buttermilk, and soft wheat, plentiful in the South. Over time, this fluffy and layered bread evolved into a regional commodity: the Southern biscuit.

6 simple baking food safety steps include:

Before baking tie back long hair, clean counters, assemble ingredients and equipment, wash hands and apron-up. Keep Separate the measuring, mixing, and handling of unbaked batter or dough from cooling, serving, or packaging of baked products.

Why are my scones not light and fluffy? The trick to getting beautiful light and fluffy scones is to handle the dough as little as possible. So when scones don't rise or aren't fluffy, it could be because the dough was over mixed or over kneaded, which makes them more dense.

Not using enough leavening agent. Placing scones far away from each other on the baking tray. Not preheating the oven before putting in the scones. Low-quality ingredients.

That slightly bitter, kinda “tinny” flavor you often experience when biting into a muffin, biscuit or scone is the result of using a baking powder in high quantities — as is needed for these quick-rise treats — with aluminum in it.