Rosemary Blackberry Scones

Again with the scone recipe in America's Test Kitchen's Baking Illustrated...
I typically use this one... after a recent trip to Harvest restaurant in Harvard Square, I came up with the idea of using rosemary and blackberry. Harvest was serving a peach raspberry rosemary shortcake for dessert during restaurant week... I thought the rosemary and raspberry went well together and I decided to make these scones. Why blackberry and not raspberry? Well, I happened to have blackberries in the fridge...but you should would try these with raspberries too!






Ingredients:

2 c. all purpose flour, plus more for dusting counter top
1 Tbsp baking powder
3 Tbsp sugar, plus more for dusting tops of scones
1/2 tsp salt
5 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1/2 c. blackberries
2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 c. heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 425 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, rosemary, and salt in a large bowl.
3. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. 4. Toss blackberries with about 2 tsp flour and stir them in.
5. With a spatula, stir in heavy cream until evenly combined.
6. Dust counter top with flour and gently knead dough into a 1" thick disc. Cut as you would a pie, into 8 evenly sized wedges and place on baking sheet.
7. Dust the tops with additional sugar and bake for 15 mins.

Catching Wild Yeast for Sourdough

I tried catching wild yeast for Sourdough...

Step 1: Crush some green grapes and put them in cheesecloth:


Step 2: Make a sachet our of it by bundling and tying with string, and submerge it in a mixture of about 1 c. flour and 1/2 c. water (it should be like pancake batter):




Step 3. Let it sit 12-24 hrs. It will foam and smell sort of like beer. Mine actually did foam, but I didn't get a picture of it because I forgot!!

Step 4. Stir and keep in the refrigerator, use as you would any sourdough starter in a bread recipe.

This is what happens when you leave it out too long:



It began to smell pretty bad... was probably plenty of bacteria in it...lysteria, MRSA and who knows what else, total disaster ;)