13. Cold Butter, Quick Fingers, and Leave It Alone

Anton: "Cold butter, quick fingers, and leave it alone."

Vera: That is what you said to me on the doorstep this morning, before I had even taken my coat off. I have been turning it over ever since, like a stone in my pocket.

Anton: It is the whole recipe for scones in eight words. Everything else is only quantities and a hot oven.

On the Doorstep, Nine O'Clock

Vera: Gaia is here, perched on the windowsill above the herb pots with her feet tucked up. She has eaten scones in a tea shop by the harbour, she says, but she has never seen one being born.

Anton: Scones come from the windy islands of the north-west, where they were once baked on a griddle over a fire of peat. Now they rise in an oven, but they are still made in the time it takes the oven to heat.

Vera: Why must the butter be cold? I always soften it for cakes.

Anton: Cold butter stays in tiny flakes inside the mixture. In the hot oven each flake melts and gives off a puff of steam, and those puffs open the scone up from inside, the way frost lifts the soil in spring. Warm butter simply melts into the flour and is gone.

At the Work Table

For 8 scones: 250 g plain flour (2 cups), 1 tablespoon baking powder, 30 g sugar (2 tablespoons), a pinch of salt, 60 g cold butter cut into small cubes (4 tablespoons) and 150 ml cold milk (2/3 cup), plus a little for brushing. Oven at 220°C (425°F).

Anton: A grown-up heats the oven to 220°C (425°F) and lines a baking tray with baking paper.

Anton: A child mixes the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl. A handful of raisins, about 40 g, can go in now too.

Anton: A child rubs the butter into the flour with the fingertips, lifting the mixture high and letting it fall, until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Three or four minutes. Quick fingers.

Anton: A child stirs in the milk with a table knife until a soft, rough dough forms. If dry flour remains, add a spoonful more milk.

Anton: Tip it onto a floured table and press it together gently, then pat it out with the hands until it is 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick. No kneading, no rolling pin.

Anton: A child cuts rounds with a 6 cm (2 1/2 inch) cutter dipped in flour, pressing straight down without twisting. Press the scraps together once for the last scones.

Anton: The child sets them on the tray, a finger apart, and brushes only the tops with milk.

Anton: A grown-up bakes them for 12 to 14 minutes, until risen and golden, takes them out in oven gloves and moves them to a rack to cool for five minutes.

Vera: And they are eaten the same day.

Anton: Yes. A scone is like a cut flower. By evening it has already begun to fade.

The Tearoom by the Ferry, Long Ago

Vera: The summer I was sixteen I carried trays for Aksel, who ran the tearoom by the ferry landing, where the gulls stood in a row on the railings and waited for crumbs. He baked a batch of scones every hour, whatever the weather.

Vera: One day I watched him take back a bowl from a new girl who was kneading the mixture as if it were bread. He only touched her wrist and said, enough, now leave it alone. She cried a little. Then her scones rose higher than his.

Anton: Aksel knew the hardest lesson for a baker's hands. Doing less.

On the Garden Bench

Question: Gaia asks why the cutter must not be twisted.

Answer: Twisting pinches the cut edges shut. The scone then rises crooked, like a young tree leaning away from the wind, instead of standing up straight and tall.

Three quick questions. One: Why must the butter stay cold? Two: How thick is the dough patted out? Three: How long do the scones bake?

Answers. One: Its flakes make steam that opens the scone. Two: 2.5 cm (1 inch). Three: 12 to 14 minutes.

Vera: Gaia has split one open with her thumbs. Steam is coming out, like mist off a lake. Jam or butter, she asks.

Anton: Both. And a cup of lemon balm tea, made from the soft leaves of a garden herb, mild enough for any child, the colour of late sunlight on the water.

Key Words

Rubbing in: mixing cold butter into flour with the fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Straight cut: pressing a cutter straight down and lifting it without twisting, so the bread rises evenly.

Milk wash: a thin coat of milk brushed on top before baking, so the crust turns golden.

14. Knock on the Bottom Like a Door

Anton: Look closely at a loaf of soda bread on the board. It is round and low, like a stone from a riverbed, dusty with flour on top. A deep cross has been cut into it, and in the oven the cross has opened into four rough little hills with brown, crackled edges.

Anton: Now turn it over. The bottom is pale and hard. Knock on the bottom like a door, and a good loaf answers with a hollow sound, as if somebody were living inside.

Vera: That is how you know it is done?

Anton: That is how bakers have known for generations. No clock, no thermometer, only a knuckle and an ear.

Friday, Rain on the Window

Vera: Delia is curled in the armchair by the fireplace with her boots off, drying her socks on the fender. She asks what makes this bread rise if there is no yeast.

Anton: Two things that meet in the bowl. Baking soda is a powder that waits. Buttermilk is sour. When they touch, they make bubbles at once, and those bubbles lift the loaf. A bread raised like this, without yeast, is called a quick bread.

Vera: And where does it come from?

Anton: From the wet, green farmlands of the west, where the wheat grows soft and the cows give plenty of milk. Farm kitchens there baked it every day in an iron pot over the fire, with glowing turf heaped on the lid.

A Farmhouse Above the Cowshed, Long Ago

Anton: When I was young I spent a wet autumn working for a farmer called Bertram. I slept in the loft above the cowshed, where the warm breath of the cows rose through the floorboards, and every morning I climbed down to his kitchen for bread.

Anton: Bertram baked it in that iron pot, buried in the embers. He never weighed anything. He tipped flour into a bowl until it looked right, poured in buttermilk until it felt right, and knocked on the bottom of the loaf until it sounded right. It always was.

Vera: And you, did you weigh?

Anton: Secretly. I wrote his quantities on the back of a seed packet. I still have it.

At the Work Table

For one round loaf: 450 g plain flour (3 1/2 cups), 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt and 400 ml buttermilk (1 2/3 cups). Without buttermilk, stir 1 tablespoon lemon juice into 400 ml milk and leave it for 10 minutes. Oven at 220°C (425°F).

Anton: A grown-up heats the oven to 220°C (425°F) and dusts a baking tray with flour.

Anton: A child mixes the flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl, rubbing out any lumps of soda between the fingers.

Anton: The child pours in most of the buttermilk and mixes quickly with one hand shaped like a claw until a soft, sticky dough forms. Add the rest if it is dry.

Anton: Tip it onto a floured table and tuck it gently into a round about 4 cm thick. Do not knead it.

Anton: A child marks a cross on top with the back of a table knife. A grown-up cuts the cross deep, about halfway down, with a sharp knife.

Anton: A grown-up bakes the loaf at once for 15 minutes, then lowers the heat to 200°C (400°F) and bakes it for 20 to 25 minutes more.

Anton: The grown-up lifts it out in oven gloves, turns it over and knocks. Hollow means done. Wrap it in a clean cloth and let it cool for 30 minutes before slicing.

Beside the Bread Board

Question: Delia asks why the loaf must go into the oven straight away.

Answer: The bubbles start the moment the buttermilk touches the soda. If the dough waits, they drift away like dandelion seeds on the wind, and the loaf bakes flat and heavy.

Three quick questions. One: What does a done loaf sound like underneath? Two: Why is the cross cut deep? Three: What can you use if you have no buttermilk?

Answers. One: Hollow, like a door. Two: So the heat reaches the middle and the loaf can open. Three: Milk with a spoonful of lemon juice.

Vera: Delia has knocked on the loaf three times already, and every time she says, "Hello."

Anton: Let her. A child who says hello to her bread on a rainy Friday morning will very likely still be baking it when her own grandchildren are curled up in an armchair by the fire.

Key Words

Baking soda: a white powder that makes bubbles of gas as soon as it meets something sour.

Buttermilk: the thin, sour milk left after making butter, or milk soured on purpose, used to wake baking soda.

Quick bread: a bread raised with baking soda or baking powder instead of yeast, so it can be baked at once.