Pumpkin Spice Scones (Sourdough Discard)

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I love the tender, flaky texture of a scone along with the subtle sweetness and flavor of a sweet scone. During the fall season I love a strong cup of coffee with something sweet and spicy. These pumpkin spice scones are tender, sweet, full of fall spice.

To get the right scone texture, you must take care with the mixing process and the temperature of the dough. When mixing, do not overmix. Only mix enough until there’s no more dry flour. If the dough is mixed too much it will cause the dough to become sticky and for the gluten to develop more which will create a less flaky and more chewy texture.

The butter must stay as cold as possible to create the flakiness in a scone. After mixing the dough–I used my hands to incorporate the wet ingredients since that was a gentler way than a stand mixer and helps to verify there’s no dry flour left.

Pumpkin creates a more moist scone than traditional scones but these still have some flakiness to them. If you want a very flaky scone, you can try this recipe.

With sourdough discard, this recipe has a great flavor right away and is ready to bake, but some time covered in the fridge enhances the flavor and texture of the scones and improves digestibility.

I tried both types of scones, one batch that was shaped and baked right away without any fermentation and one batch that was refrigerated for 8 hours before it was shaped and baked.

The unfermented scones were somewhat flakier than the fermented scones. The fermented scones has a more pronounced flavor and more tender bite. The spices in the fermented scones were also more pronounced in flavor than the unfermented.

If you’d like to learn more about sourdough discard and how to use it, store it, and more, you can check out these posts and videos:

I hope you enjoy this recipe! Let me know in the comments or tag me in your recipe on instagram @livingbreadbaker

Print Recipe

Pumpkin Spice Scones (sourdough discard)

Prep Time30 mins

Course: Breakfast, Dessert

Keyword: fall, pumpkin, sourdough, sourdough discard

Servings: 16 medium scones

Author: Jenny Prior

Equipment

• baking sheet
• Parchment Paper
• pastry cutter (or forks)
• Food Scale
• Rolling Pin
• Mixing Bowl
• bench knife or large knife

Ingredients

• 50 g whole wheat flour
• 350 g all purpose flour
• 100 g brown sugar
• 25 g cane sugar
• 15 g baking powder
• 4 g salt
• 6 g cinnamon 2 t.
• 3 g ginger 1 t.
• 2 g freshly ground nutmeg 1 t.
• 2 g ground clove 3/4 t.
• 134 g unsalted butter chilled
• 180 g pumpkin purée
• 150 g sourdough discard

Icing

• 65 grams powdered sugar 1/2 cup
• 1 t. vanilla extract (you can sub. maple extract)
• 1-3 t. milk

Instructions

• Mix dry ingredients (flour, spices, salt, baking powder) in a bowl.
• Cut butter into cubes or slices. Incorporate into dry ingredients with pastry cutter or forks.
• Once the dry ingredients and butter are combined and the butter pieces are no bigger than a pea, mix in the pumpkin purée and sourdough discard. Mix until just wet and no dry flour. Don’t overmix.
• These can be shaped and baked right away or for optimum digestibility, softer crumb, and more pronounced flavor, you will want to put your dough into the fridge to ferment. To ferment, cover dough and put in the fridge for 2-12 hours to develop flavor and let the sourdough begin to break down the gluten for digestibility.
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• Prepare 2 baking sheets by placing a sheet of parchment paper on top of each one. Place the chilled dough on an unfloured work surface. Cut the dough in half. Roll out each half of the dough into a 5-inch-by-5-inch square that is evenly thick--about 1-inch thick. Use a large knife like a butcher knife or pastry cutter and cut squares of rolled dough in half along the middle both directions to create four equal parts of each square (8 smaller squares in total amoung the two portions of dough). Then cut each square diagonally to create 16 medium-sized scones. Place onto the two baking sheets about 3 or more inches apart.
  
• Recover each pan with plastic wrap to rechill in fridge while oven finishes preheating. Bake one pan of scones at a time.
• Bake each pan for 12-14 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the largest scone comes out clean.
• Move scones to a cooling rack.
• Once scones are no longer hot and only slightly warm (20-30 minutes), whisk together the ingredients for the icing. The consistency should be drizzling consistency--when you lift up the whisk, the icing should drizzle off and make a defined pattern on the rest of the icing before it dissolves back into the rest of the batch.
• Drizzle icing in a zigzag pattern across the tops of the scones.
  
• Enjoy!

Notes

Scones have a signature tender, flaky texture. To achieve this, the butter must stay cold which means the dough should be chilled if it gets too warm or if time is needed to rest or ferment. Also, you want to avoid over mixing or overworking the dough which will cause the scones to develop more gluten strength and become chewy. The pumpkin scone version is less flaky than traditional due to the high moisture in pumpkin.