Orange Scones – Sourdough

Orange scones made with sourdough – what a perfect way to start the morning! Grab a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy these scones for breakfast or a mid-day snack.

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About these Orange Scones

I’ll just start by saying that I love scones, so I never need an excuse to make them. My sourdough scones with granola were the starting point. I wanted to come up with a scone recipe that didn’t require granola, which I don’t always have on hand. What I had on hand was a bag of oranges, so I tweaked my existing sourdough scones recipe to exclude granola and include oranges. Fruit and nuts go great in scones so I added them to the ingredients and tried out the recipe. I tested these orange scones out on friends and made them a few times until I felt like this recipe was ready to share. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Ingredients

Orange Scones Dough

• Flour – use all-purpose flour.
• Leavening ingredients – baking powder and baking soda help the scones rise.
• Cinnamon – sweet quick-breads always taste better with cinnamon.
• Brown sugar – adds just enough sweetness.
• Butter – adds great flavor and oil, but you can substitute shortening or refined coconut oil.
• Sourdough starter discard – my sourdough is about one-third whole wheat flour and the rest is all-purpose flour.
• Orange juice – fresh squeezed is best but you can use store-bought orange juice.
• Orange zest – fresh is definitely best.
• Walnuts – broken into pieces
• Currants – you can also use cranberries or other dried fruits, depending on what you like.

Topping

• Granulated sugar
• Cinnamon
• Melted butter

Instructions

1. Prepare the ingredients

• This step is always important, but it’s especially recommended in this recipe. Things go much more quickly when you have everything at hand before you begin.
• Grate the peel of one large navel orange to get the fresh orange zest.
• Use a citrus juicer to get the ¼ cup of orange juice from the same orange that you grated for the zest.
• Melt the butter and set it aside.

2. Prepare the dough

• Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon into a large mixing bowl.
• Stir the brown sugar into the above dry ingredients.
• Add the orange juice, orange zest, the sourdough discard, melted butter, walnuts, and currants to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
• Preheat the oven to 425-degrees.

3.Get the orange scones ready for baking

• Divide the dough into three equal-sized balls.
• Put a ball of dough onto a floured cutting board and knead it briefly.
• Flatten the dough to about one inch high.

• Cut it into four (or more) pieces.

• Put the uncooked scones onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Repeat the above four steps for the other two balls of dough.

4. Add the cinnamon sugar topping

• Melt the extra tablespoon of butter.
• Mix the granulated sugar and cinnamon.
• Spread the melted butter on top of the scones. You can use milk instead of butter if you prefer. This step is just to get the cinnamon and sugar mixture to stick to the top of the scones.

• Sprinkle the scones with the sugar/cinnamon mixture.

5. Bake the orange scones

• Bake the scones in a 425-degree oven for 15 minutes.

How to get orange zest from a fresh orange

Here’s how I make my own orange zest. I have found that one average-sized navel orange makes about a tablespoon of fresh orange zest.

1. Wash and dry a fresh navel orange.
2. Put a cheese grater on a cutting board or over a bowl.
3. Scrape the orange across the grater to get the orange peel off.
4. Try not to get the pithy part because it’s bitter, but a little bit of that is okay.

Serving Orange Scones

These orange scones are so good hot out of the oven. As they bake, your house fills with the smell of cinnamon and sweet oranges.

Is it too much to have these orange scones with sliced oranges or marmalade? Absolutely not! They’re also good with butter, honey, other jams, or on their own. The next day I like to slice them in two and toast them in the toaster oven.

Questions and Answers

Can you use store-bought orange zest and orange juice?

Orange juice from the store will work okay, but I have not had good results with the orange zest found in the spice section. If you have an orange, it just takes a minute or two to make fresh orange zest and juice. You won’t be sorry you took the time to do it. If you do use store-bought orange zest, use a little less than a tablespoon.

Can you make vegan sourdough scones?

Yes, this recipe can be vegan if you substitute shortening or coconut oil for the butter. There are no eggs in the recipe so you don’t need any type of egg replacer.

Can you freeze sourdough scones?

Yes, this makes a lot of scones and I regularly freeze half of them and take a couple out whenever I want scones.

Take a look at this close-up. You’ve gotta’ make these scones.

Sourdough Tips and tricks

• Sourdough flour – My sourdough is 1/3 whole wheat and 2/3 white flour. If your sourdough is all white flour or all whole wheat flour, consider adding some other type of flour to your batter.
• Sourdough also varies in moisture content – If your sourdough is pretty moist, you might need to add more flour. If it’s drier, add more orange juice or a little milk. Most kinds of nut-milk will work in this recipe.
• Sourdough discard – I keep my discard in the fridge. On the day I make the scones, I measure out one cup of starter discard and let it get to room temperature so it will be more active. You can put it in a bowl and rest it in another bowl that contains warm water to bring it to room temperature more quickly. The recipe will work if you skip this step, but I think it helps.
• Let the melted butter cool to room temperature – If the butter is too hot it can kill the sourdough. If it’s nice and warm it will help keep the sourdough active so the scones will rise.

Sourdough Discard

Keeping sourdough means feeding it regularly, and you always have to discard some of the sourdough when you feed it. I pour that discarded sourdough into a container and refrigerate it for use in biscuits, scones, pancakes, and corn muffins. The yeast and bacteria that make sourdough bread rise is not active enough in the discard, so it needs help in the way of baking powder and/or baking soda. But the discard still has the tangy sourdough flavor that gives the resulting baked goods that distinctive taste. For more info about sourdough and using discard, check out this article.

This recipe assumes that you have sourdough on hand. If you don’t and you’re craving these yummy scones, get some starter going, and then come back. I got my starter at Cultures for Health.