If you’ve been making our Sourdough Bread recipe, here’s a little treat for you I know you will love! Sourdough Scones with Lemeony Glaze! This recipe came about after I ended up with a ton of extra blackberries after a catering event, and wanted to use up some sourdough discard (sourdough starter) I had in my fridge.
Wow! I was honestly blown away! First, let me just say right away, the sourdough starter gives the scones such an earthy, robust flavor that pairs so beautifully with sweet tart berries!
But First, what is sourdough Starter/ Discard?
Sourdough Starter is often referred to as “wild yeast”, made from flour and water and the wild yeast in the air around us,and it is typically used as the “yeast” when baking Sourdough Bread. The sourdough “discard” – the part of the starter that often goes to waste- can be used to make flavorful scones, biscuits, wafflesand pancakes.
Why you’ll love this!
- A great way to use sourdough discard!
- It incudes a chef’s to keeping fresh berries intact.
- Sourdough starter adds such good flavor!
What you’ll need (Ingredients)
- Fresh or frozen berries (blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, or other berries)
- All-purpose flour (see notes)
- Sourdough starter (or sourdough discard)
- Lemon zest
- Salt
- Baking powder and baking soda
- Sugar
- Cold butter (or vegan butter)
- Milk, half and half (or plant-based milk)
How to make Sourdough Scones
Step 1: Line an 8-inch cake pan with parchment and fill with 2 cups of fresh berries. ( See notes for frozen berries). If your berries are very tender, freeze for 30-60 minutes beforehand, this way they will hold their shape (and not smash) a little better.
Step 2: In a food processor, pulse flour, lemon zest, salt, baking powder, baking soda and sugar. Pulse in cold butter until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Alternatively, you can do this in a bowl, breaking apart the butter apart with your fingers.
Step 3: In a small bowl mix the milk and sourdough starter together. Add the starter mixture to the food processor ( or bowl) and pulse until it just forms a ball (just a few times) adding a little more milk only if necessary. Dough should be heavy and thick. Don’t overwork it.
Step 4: Spread the dough gently over the berries and press down very lightly, into all the corners with your fingers. Place in the freezer for 2 hours
Step 4: Preheat the oven to 400F. Remove the dough from the freezer and invert it on a cutting board. Let it sit a few minutes or longer until thawed enough to cut. Cut into 8 equal-sized pie wedges.
Chef’s tips
- Use cold butter, and don’t leave out the lemon zest.
- Don’t overwork the dough, which will release the gluten in the flour and cause the scones to be chewy.
- Whenever you follow a recipe calling for flour, make sure to always spoon and level the flour into your measuring cup.
More Sourdough Discard recipes you may enjoy:
Sourdough Scones Video
Sourdough Scones
- Prep Time: 170
- Cook Time: 20
- Total Time: 2 hours 50 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
- Category: breads, scones,
- Method: baked
- Cuisine: pacific northwest
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
An easy recipe for Sourdough Scones with Berries and Lemon Glaze using Sourdough Starter! Plus an easy tip to help keep your berries intact! Vegan Adaptable!
Ingredients
Scones:
- 2 cup fresh or frozen blackberries (or raspberries or other berries)
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (see notes)
- zest from one lemon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup cold butter- sliced into 8 pieces ( or vegan butter)
- 1 cup sourdough starter (275 grams)
- 1/3 cup milk or cream (or nut milk, plus more if necessary)
- optional: 1 beaten egg, for brushing
Lemony Glaze:
- 2 tablespoons fresh Lemon Juice
- 1 cup powdered Sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Line an 8-inch cake pan with parchment and fill with 2 cups fresh berries. If your berries are very tender, freeze for 30-60 minutes beforehand, this way they will hold their shape ( and not smash) a little better.
- In a food processor, pulse flour, lemon zest, salt, baking powder, baking soda and sugar. Pulse in cold butter until mixture resembles coarse sand.
- In a small bowl mix milk and sourdough starter together. Add the starter mixture to the food processor and pulse until it just forms a ball (just a few times) adding a little more milk only if necessary. Dough should be heavy and thick. Don’t overwork it.
- Spread the dough over the berries and press down gently, into all the corners with your fingers. Place in the freezer for 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 400F. Remove dough from the freezer and invert on cutting board. Let sit a few minutes or longer until thawed enough to cut. Cut into 8 equal size pie shape wedges. Brush with beaten egg (optional). Space them 2 inches apart (they will puff and spread a bit) on parchment-lined baking sheet, let thaw 20-30 minutes and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
- While baking, make the lemon glaze. Place powdered sugar in a small bowl. Using a tiny whisk or fork, whisk out any clumps. Add lemon juice and vanilla and whisk well. Set aside and drizzle over warm scones. Sprinkle with lemon zest before it sets.
Notes
Frozen Berries can simply be folded into the dough, and no need to freeze the dough, saving time.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 scone
- Calories: 399
- Sugar: 15 g
- Sodium: 233.3 mg
- Fat: 12.3 g
- Saturated Fat: 7.3 g
- Carbohydrates: 65.2 g
- Fiber: 3.7 g
- Protein: 7.4 g
- Cholesterol: 30.7 mg
Would it be okay to freeze this dough overnight? I found myself making these later in the day than I wanted and would love them warm in the morning 🙂
Yes!
Great recipe! I’ve only ever had scones once in my life and they were homemade, so I’m sad to admit that I’ve never had a real professionally made scone- not that it matters because I don’t know what I’m missing and your recipe is DELISH!
I made it earlier this week to host an Afternoon Tea via zoom (#quarantinelife) and I thought the aesthetic of these scones would lend to the theme of the “high tea” that I was going for. I ended up using frozen wild blueberries because that’s what I had on hand and I had an orange that I had zested for another recipe earlier in the week, so I used the juice of one orange and a maybe half a lemon to make the glaze and opted for the butter-; because, let’s be honest, butter makes everything better. My husband isn’t a sweets guy, but he nearly ate all of the scones before I could arrange them on my table (proof of their deliciousness- no doubt).
So it’s been less than a week and I’m making the scones again (they’re in the freezer awaiting the morning. I really like the orange with blueberries more than lemon, so I’m going all in with the orange zest and juice this time- probably no lemon (I’ll taste the glaze before I decide). I’ve read about the decadence of clotted cream, so I’ve got that going for these scones – I’m pretty excited 😊
I LOVE that I found this recipe because I hate to waste and it bothers me every time I feed my starter that I have to discard some, so every 10-15 days I end up making pizza dough with discard starter or biscuits; now, pizza and biscuits are getting old! Thank you thank you thank you for sharing!!!
Oh dear ….I am in the middle of starting this recipe and don’t understand what the heck you mean by starting with 1/2 cup if I am using’ other flours’. So if I am using gluten free flour, Ib use other flours as I don’t have sourdough available, I jump from 2 1/2 cups down to only 1/2 cup total. This doesn’t make any sense to me. okay back into the freezer goes the frozen blackberries in glass pie pan until I hear back from you. I cannot afford to waste ingredients.
Sorry – I see the confusion. If you would like to mix flours, for the first time, sub only 1/2 cup. For example, if you wanted to add rye or whole wheat- use 1/2 cup rye and 2 cups white flour.
Thanks Sylvia….it definitely makes sense now. Berries in pan, frozen, & ready to go. Thanks for your quick response.
Love. This.
Couple of notes:
1) This will work just fine in a 9″ cake pan. You may want to up the amount of berries you use to cover the entire bottom of the pan, but don’t think you have to run out and buy a non-standard, difficult-to-find 8″ pan just to make this recipe.
2) Don’t use plastic wrap to cover the bottom of the pan. Instead, cut a parchment round to size. If you use plastic wrap, inevitably a wrinkle or corner will get caught in a crease in the dough or under a berry, freeze there, and then tear when you try to remove it. And fishing minuscule pieces of plastic wrap out of…well, anything…suuuuuucks.
3) A 20 minute rest on the counter and a large bench scraper are your best friends for the whole ‘cutting wedges’ task — particularly if you make dough the night before, then toss the pan in the freezer and bake the scones the next morning. This ‘overnight’ strategy works great, but be aware that if you do this, the berries will be little blocks of ice in the morning. It’s not a huge deal, but they’re difficult to cut through – especially if you use blueberries.
4) If you do the ‘freeze overnight’ thing, plan for the scones to take a bit longer than the advertised ’18-20 minutes’ to fully bake. Mine took about 23 minutes, but I kicked on the convection fan in my oven for the last 5-6 minutes. Had I not done that, they’d likely have taken close to 30 minutes.
5) The scones will puff up and spread a bit in the oven, so don’t put your wedges right next to each-other. Make sure they’re each at least 1/2″ apart, otherwise, you’ll get to separate them all over again.
Only critique I’d give is that I’d like to see the measurements given in grams (of flour, starter, milk, etc…), as opposed to cups. “Cups” is so inaccurate…and completely un-repeatable.
That’s a small nitpick, though – the scones were, in the end, AMAZING!!! I love that I was able to use a bunch of sourdough discard AND put the whole thing together in the food processor!
Thanks for sharing this recipe. I really loved it. Shared it today with my coworkers who are also essential workers.
I was looking for something to do with my extra sourdough starter and it was perfect 🙂
Further to Michael’s comment, the recipe if doubled or tripled still isn’t 100%. The amount of flour doesn’t change though it seems the rest of them change.
These are amazing. Ive been making them every summer with our blackberries.
Hello Sylvia, this is such an intrigueing recipe and I especially like the look of the scones and the trick with inverting it and using sourdough starter. Great idea to have the quantities doubled or tripled. However I have found that all amounts are either doubled or tripled except the lemon juice for the glaze and the flour in the scone mix. They just stay at the same amount. There is maybe a bug. You have a wonderful looking blog and I will come back again to check out more.
There must be a bug. Thanks for letting me know – I appreciate it.
could I make these ahead and keep in freezer for baking at a later date?
Absolutely!
Best scone I’ve ever had! I’m not exaggerating. I used fresh milled hard white wheat for the flour and sourdough starter in mine. Crumbly, so flavorful, and moist. ♥️
Jenny, thanks so much, appreciate the comment!!!
So glad to have found your site. Unfortunately, the link for printing the berry scone recipe doesn’t seem to be working. Hope that it will soon.
Thanks for letting me know, I just fixed it!
Just made this tonight (with a few minor modifications due to time and not having all the electrical gadgets to use) and it was AMAZING! I didn’t have time to freeze it for the 4 hours (I am a very last minute baker!) so I used parchment paper in the base and put a layer of fresh picked blackberries and then I put the dough over and then I pushed in a layer of blackberries in the top. I put it in the freezer for about 30-40 minutes while I finished making the rest of dinner. I heated the oven to 380 (my oven is sunny with temperatures) and then backed the whole thing for about 45 minutes. It felt quite soft to the touch at the end of 50 minutes so I turned off the heat and left it sit in the oven for another 20 minutes. When I cut it I was sure it was going to be mushy inside…but it wasn’t! This was one of the fluffiest creations I have ever made in all my 56 years! My guests put on a little maple syrup (as you do in Canada) and raved! Thanks for the great recipe.
I forgot to say that I cooked it like a cake, I didn’t cut individual scones.
Glad it turned out and you enjoyed it!
Just looking at my horrible spelling from last night’s comment! I should always have my glasses on AND the LIGHTS so I can see what I am typing! 😉
Ha ha I can relate!
Was I supposed to put berries in the dough- I don’t see that step but your pictures look like there r berries inside
Omg…..just ate the finished product-Amazing!!!!
our scones rose in the oven. And are something like some commmercial/bakery scones I have had but not like crumbly scones at all. Nor are they hard. We have a sour dough starter that is based on King Arthur flour, we have had for several years from a relative. Used mainly for bread and pancakes The dough was a little sticky,more tacky, but not runny and could be worked in to the pan, but was not hard or crumbly.
When cut open they are light and a little spongy with small air pockets.
Though they are quite good, they are not like other scones we have made which look more like your photos. Have never used the sourdough starter in scones..
We live at 3500 feet. The dough was not in clumps as yours appeared in the pictures, and pushing the dough in the pan did not crush the blackberries.
If you were going to add oats, how much would you add and how much of the flour would you use?
Jen, that is a great question and I would be guessing at this point….so don’t want to lead you astray. If you do try it, please let me know what you did and how it turned out!
Comment to an old post but hey, it’s worth a try! I would generally substitute no more than 1/3 of the total flour. I would also use quick oats as they will act more like flour than old-fashioned oats. I am going to be trying this tomorrow and will let you know how it all works out!
Thanks Alyssa- I appreciate this.
Sorry for the late response! I think it would be fine for two weeks. 🙂
Great move bringing the bold taste of sourdough to a scone, and thanks for the clever little tip about the berries.
Love that you can use sourdough here!
LOVE that you can use sourdough here!
You have a wonderful blog and beautiful pictures! Do you mind me asking what you used for the backdrop in these photos? Thanks 🙂
I used a wood tray. Im not sure which ones you mean?
Your food photos are amazing. You can share your mouth watering photos with us at foodienewz.com and your photos published on FoodieNewz without any editorial review.
this is such a special recipe, and I happen to have some rye flour at home!
Your recipes are wonderful. I would love for you to share them with us at foodieportal.com. Foodieportal.com is a new food sharing site, we’re no photography snobs, we’re just foodies and we actually try hard to promote your pictures. At foodieportal.com all your food pictures will get accepted so I really hope you come and join us.
These are stunning! Love this recipe!
These are simply gorgeous!