Pumpkin Spice Scones (sourdough discard)
Servings: 16 medium scones
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 1/3 cup
- 350 g all purpose flour 2 and 1/3 cups
- 100 g brown sugar 1/2 cup
- 25 g cane sugar 2 T.
- 15 g baking powder 1 T.
- 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 (10 T.)
- 180 g pumpkin purée about 3/4 cup
- 150 g runny sourdough discard about 3/4 cup
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.
- Optional: 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. See fermentation notes in full post.
- Prepare 2 baking sheets by placing a sheet of parchment paper on top of each one. Use a lightly floured surface to roll out your dough so that it does not stick to the surface or the rolling pin.To cut the scone dough, use a large sharp knife or bench knife.
- There are two ways to shape these scones:#1 Best way to get fluffiest scones:Split the dough in half and shape each half into a 8-inch wide round using a rolling pin that has an even thickness of 1-inch.Then each round into 8 wedges each like a pizza. Once both rounds are shaped and cut, you will have 16 scones total.This method is shown in recipe photos.OR#2 Fastest way to shape scones:Roll out all the dough on your floured surface until it is a 11-inch-by-11-inch square that is an even thickness, about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick.Cut the dough in half along the middle of the square along the length and the width so there are four equal smaller square sections.Then cut an X in each smaller square to create 16 triangle shaped scones.This method is shown in video update.
- Once all scones are shaped, transfer to prepared baking sheets. Cover with plastic wrap and chill while your oven preheats or for the length of time that you are completing fermentation as described in full post.
- Optional: Keep scones in the fridge to ferment for 2 to 12 hours.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- 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!
Video
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.