Cheddar Herb Scones #BreadBakers

These fluffy cheddar herb scones have the most wonderful flavor, not just from the cheese and herbs but also from the yeast used as the rising agent.

Most scones, at least in my experience, are raised with baking powder and/or baking soda but this month our Bread Bakers host, Sue of Palatable Pastime challenged us to bake them (or their American counterpart, biscuits) with yeast instead.

I’m here to tell you that yeast can make a lovely light scone as well and almost as quickly, with just one 30-minute rise of the dough before baking. The cheese and herbs are subtle in these scones but that just makes them more versatile.

Cheddar Herb Scones

My recipe is adapted from one on Kitchen Stories. My family ate a few for breakfast but I also served them with bacon and pork patties as an alternative burger for dinner. Delicious!

Ingredients
2 teaspoons dry active yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup or 240ml warm water
2 cups or 250g bread flour
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
Black pepper
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus a little extra for the bowl
3 1/2 oz or 100g extra sharp cheddar cheese, plus extra for topping, if desired
1 egg, lightly beaten

Method
Grate your cheese and set aside.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix the yeast and sugar into the warm water. It should get nice and bubbly if your yeast is healthy.

Sift the flours and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add in a few generous grinds of black pepper, the grated cheddar, and herbs and mix well.

Add the olive oil to the yeast mixture then add the wet mixture to the dry ingredient bowl.

Stir with a wooden spoon until it’s too stiff to stir. Tip the shaggy dough out onto a clean surface and knead until all the ingredients come together in a tidy ball.

Put a little olive oil in the bowl and turn the dough ball over to coat. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it proof for 30 minutes, in a warm dark place.

When your dough is almost through proofing, preheat the oven to 400°F or 200°C and prepare your baking pan by lining it with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly dusted work surface lightly knead. Pat it into a disc that is about 1 in or 2.5 cm thick. Use a floured cookie or biscuit cutter to cut the dough into 3 inch or 7.6cm circles. Depending on the thickness of your dough, you should get seven or eight scones.

Transfer the dough circles to your lined baking pan. Brush with the beaten egg.

Sprinkle on a little cheddar, if desired.

Bake for 15-20 minutes in the preheated oven or until golden brown and well risen. Remove from the oven and serve with butter while still warm.

Enjoy!

If you are a fan of scones or biscuits, this is the Bread Baker recipe list for you! Many thanks to Sue from Palatable Pastime for hosting this month!

• Angel Biscuits from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Buttery Jeera Biscuits from Sneha's Recipe
• Cheddar Herb Scones from Food Lust People Love
• Cheddar and Chive Blossom Scones from Palatable Pastime
• Cheese and Herbs Scones from Ambrosia
• Chocolate Scones from Passion Kneaded
• Freeze and Bake Yeasted Mini Ginger Scones from A Messy Kitchen
• Laminated Biscuits from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Herbed Angel Biscuits from The Schizo Chef
• Sourdough Orange Biscuits from Zesty South Indian
• Sourdough Sandwich Biscuits from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Yeast-Raised Angel Biscuits from Making Miracles

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Savory Mediterranean Scones #BakingBloggers

These savory Mediterranean scones are tender and fluffy, full of flavor with feta cheese, soft sun-dried tomatoes and a mixture of salty olives. They are a great breakfast or snack. I highly recommend using one for a fried egg sandwich!

As I prepped my ingredients to make these scones, my husband wandered by. It was a Sunday morning and no one at our house moves very fast on one of those. “Whatcha making?” he asked. “Mediterranean scones,” I replied. “No such thing!” was his response. And I suppose that he has a point. Scones are a particularly British thing, not unlike his good self, and they don’t usually contain feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and olives.

But as soon as Sue, the host of Baking Bloggers, announced the theme for this month’s event - biscuits and scones - I knew I wanted to bake something savory. I’ve already shared my freeze-and-bake buttermilk biscuits, my slightly sweet bacon honey mustard biscuits and, of course, the ubiquitous fall favorite, sweet pumpkin scones so it was time to jump over to the savory side.

“When in doubt, add cheese” is one of my mottos so a Mediterranean-inspired scone with feta cheese seemed ideal.

Savory Mediterranean Scones

This recipe is adapted from one on BBC Good Food from way back in 2004, with just a few little tweaks. The original created such a wet dough that I decided to make drop biscuits/scones instead of rolling and cutting. My way is easier and the results are lovely and fluffy.

Ingredients
2 3/4 cups or 345g all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or 56g butter, cut in pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 halves soft Italian sundried tomatoes
3 1/2 oz or 100g feta cheese
10 or 55g mixed Greek olives, plus extra for decoration, if desired
1 1/4 cups or 295ml full fat milk

Optional to serve: butter

Method
Heat the oven to 375°F or 190°C. Line a large baking pan with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Pit your olives by mashing them with the side of a big knife on a cutting board. Remove the pits and chop the olives roughly.

Stack your sun-dried tomatoes and use a sharp knife to cut them into small pieces. Alternatively, if you have sharp kitchen scissors, I find they are very effective at cutting through a small stack of dried tomatoes.

Use a fork or knife to crumble the feta cheese, keeping some pieces bigger than others. This insures that you still have some chunks of cheese left visible after you fold the milk into the dry ingredients.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Use a pastry blender to blend in the butter and the oil, until the mixture resembles rough sand.

Add in the sun-dried tomatoes, feta and olives and stir well so they are coated with the flour.

Make a well in the center and pour in the milk. Use a rubber spatula (so you can scrape the sides of the bowl effectively) to gently fold the milk into the flour, rotating the bowl as you fold, until all of the milk is incorporated. Do not over mix. This is going to be an extremely thick batter.

Use an ice cream scoop or two serving spoons to drop the dough onto your prepared baking pan. My ice cream scoop holds about 1/4 cup by volume, which translated to 12 drop scones.

This is the time to take the stones out of a three extra olives and quarter them if you want to decorate the scones with a spare piece of olive.

Bake for 30-35 minutes in your preheated oven until the scones are risen and lightly browned.

Check out the lovely bottoms! Golden, crunchy and divine!

Transfer to a wire rack. These are wonderful warm and, if you like, well-embuttered. That said, we ate them plain as well and they were great!

An aside: Blogger seems to think that embuttered is a misspelling, which surprised me. So I looked it up. It is indeed a real word (OF COURSE, IT IS!) but embuttered is rarely used. We should totally change that. Who's with me? EMBUTTER all the things.

Enjoy!

This month my Baking Blogger friends are all sharing biscuit and scone recipes, both sweet and savory. Many thanks to our founder and host Sue of Palatable Pastime. Check out the recipes on the list below:

• Baileys Irish Cream Almond Scones from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Basic Tea Time Scones from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Coconut Mango Scones from Caroline's Cooking
• Cran-Cherry Orange Scones from Making Miracles
• Irish Cream Scones from Tara's Multicultural Table
• Lemonade Scones from Sneha's Recipe
• Oatmeal Currant Scones from Palatable Pastime
• Orange and Cranberry Scones from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Savory Cheesy Chive Scones from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Savory Mediterranean Scones from Food Lust People Love
• Sourdough Mango Scones from A Day in the Life on the Farm

Baking Bloggers is a friendly group of food bloggers who vote on a shared theme and then post recipes to fit that theme one the second Monday of each month. If you are a food blogger interested in joining in, inquire at our Baking Bloggers Facebook group. We'd be honored if you would join us in our baking adventures.

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