I do love a good cheesie scone and the addition of sourdough to the mix really does take them to the next level, let alone the tasty wild garlic. If you haven’t got one already, then google search “sourdough starter” and you’ll find a plethora of great recipes and tips out there. This recipe requires an active starter or discard that you top up to 200g with a feed of water and flour leaving a little while for it to start to bubble.
In addition to a step by step illustrated guide here, there is also a link to a full demonstration I recorded on YouTube.
Ingredients list:
- 5 or 6 Wild Garlic leaves chopped
- 200g Sourdough starter
- 230g Plain flour
- 125g Cold butter cubed
- 150g Mature Cheddar cheese
- 120g Milk (remove a little & add 1 capful cider vinegar to make buttermilk sub if preferred)
- 1tsp Baking powder
- 1/2tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 1/2tsp Salt (ground)
- 1tsp Paprika or Mustard powder as preferred
Method:
First of all put your oven on to preheat, Gas Mark 7, 220°C or you can use an airfryer at 180°C (reducing the bake time down to 12-15 mins). Then put your flour in a bowl and add the salt, paprika (if you’re using) and the raising agents, mix until evenly distributed. I like to use spelt flour, it’s a good all purpose flour and makes great bread and cakes, but isn’t so high in gluten as it’s closer to natural wheat that hasn’t been hybridised for commercial purposes. The particular mill I’m using here is stoneground, but I prefer to use Wessex Mill’s finer milled white spelt flour, unfortunately my supplier hasn’t been able to source it recently.
Add the cubed butter and rub in with your thumbs and finger tips until you achieve a light crumb. Avoid over working or allowing the butter to melt in the heat of your palms, the odd little clump of butter is not a problem. Add your cheese, all of it if you like really cheesie scones or retain 25g ish to dress the top of your scones, I prefer to use all of mine and grate extra for the topping. Also add the chopped wild garlic leaves and mix until evenly distributed. Put this to one side as you need to mix together the sourdough starter and milk before adding it to the cheesie flour crumbs.
Once your milk and sourdough is thoroughly combined add it to you dry ingredients and gently mix together to form a light dough. Again it is best not to over work a scone dough as it will make the scones denser.
Remove your dough to a lightly floured surface and gently knead for about 1/2 a minute, bringing it into shape and flattening slightly for cutting. You’ll want to leave you dough at least an inch/3cm thick. Then cut into individual scones, you can use ordinary biscuit cutters, I prefer to cut into rectangles with a knife which saves having to reform the dough to use the off cuts. This mix should give you about 8 scones dependent upon the size you cut them. Line a baking tray with grease proof paper, place your scones on the baking tray leaving room for them to expand. Paint with a little milk, top with grated cheese and decorate with some pumpkin seeds. Place in the middle of your preheated oven for 20 minutes, checking them after 15 minutes. Once cooked remove from the oven and place on a rack to cool a little before eating.
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