Figgy Buckwheat Scones

I used to make scones a lot but not so much any more...isn't it interesting how we go through phases in our cooking. My current kick is flourless baked goods. Anywho, these scones are like nothing that I have ever seen because they have this swirl of jam through them. I will have to give them a try.

Thanks for the great recipe idea!!!!




Figgy Buckwheat Scones: "

I've been waiting for months to write this post. The better part of a year, even. I'm positively itching to share this with you, so here we go. Late last summer (the lovely, gracious, talented) Luisa Weiss let me spend some time with the proofs of a baking book she was working on. She said she thought I'd like it. Which, it tuns out, was a dramatic understatement. The book she shared with me, Good to the Grain, is about baking with whole grain flours. It was written by Kim Boyce, and photographed by Quentin Bacon.

There aren't many people writing contemporary books on whole grain baking. Among those few, this one is special. In a sentence, a top-flight pastry chef intersects whole grain flours in her home kitchen. To back up a bit, Kim is a former pastry chef with major chops (Spago / Campanile) who left the professional kitchen to raise her family. Her book delves into her exploration of a broad range of whole grain flours, each of the twelve main chapters explores a separate flour - whole-wheat flour, amaranth flour, barley flour, buckwheat flour, corn flour, kamut flour, multigrain flour, oat flour, quinoa flour, rye flour, spelt flour, and yes...even teff flour.

Here's the quote I gave for the back of the book,'There was a point in my life when I realized limiting myself to baking with all-purpose flour was like limiting myself to painting with just one color. Kim Boyce's collection of beautifully rustic recipes inspires us to move enthusiastically into the rich palette of flavorful whole-grain flours and explore all they have to offer. I just can't get enough of this book.'

I wrote a good amount about baking with whole grain flours in SNC, but to see what someone like Kim is doing with them is both exciting and inspiring for me. I could tell at a glance, wow, she's really excited about them too. It felt good to know someone like her was (mostly ;) having fun exploring this range of flours and this approach to baking. I love seeing what she is doing, and now I know who to email when I'm stumped.

I could write an entire post about the photography in Good to the Grain, but I'll save that for another day. Instead, I'll leave you with a few notes related to the Figgy Buckwheat Scones I baked last weekend. They're a bit of a project, but a fun one requiring two main components - the obscenely addictive fig butter (dried figs, port wine, red wine, spices, sugar) and the buckwheat scone dough. Make the fig butter ahead of time, and the scone dough is a breeze to pull together. They're complex and jammy with a hint of sweetness and lots of flavor coming from the magical collision of the caramelized sugars in the fig butter and the hot baking sheet.

Related links:

- Kim Boyce (on twitter)

- Cheryl writes about Kim's muesli (here)

- Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours

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