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I am not a scone person — they are usually dry, solid, and crumbly, with so much baking powder that they squeak in your teeth!  These are different.  Based on a recipe from one of my favorite bakeries in the whole world, the Beach Pea Bakery in Kittery, Maine, they are light, moist, buttery, and just barely sweet. 

3 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

5/8 cup sugar

1 1/4 tbsp baking powder

2 1/2 tsp salt

6 1/2 tbsp cold butter

1 cup raspberries

zest of 1/2 lemon

2 cups low fat buttermilk

Additional sugar or turbinado or demerara sugar for dusting.

Combine dry ingredients in a stand mixer.  Mix at the lowest speed until combined.

Cut butter into small cubes (I quarter the stick, then chop into 1/4 inch slices.)  Add butter to mixer at low speed, and mix for 3-4 minutes. Remove bowl from mixer, and add lemon zest and raspberries. Then add buttermilk and stir until just combined — do not overmix.

Preheat oven to 400°.  Grease 2 cookie sheets with paper left over from butter.  Spoon 1/2 cup mounds onto cookie sheets, evenly spaced at least 2 inches apart. Sprinkle tops of scones with sugar.

Bake about 20 minutes, until nicely browned and springy to the touch (don’t push too hard!)

Makes 16 medium sized scones.

Apparently, I completely missed the boat on the whole  no-knead bread thing starting back in 2006, in which Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery discovers the holy grail of making boulangerie-quality bread in a home oven and Mark Bittman tells the world about it. In between planning a wedding, buying an apartment, and having our first baby, things were a little zany, but I did have to sulk for a week or so after discovering how clueless I was about this fabulous foodie craze happening right under my very nose.  Fortunately, it didn’t take me too long to throw some bread, salt, and yeast in bowl and risk blowing the handle off my Le Creuset dutch oven, which I am now doing on a more-or-less weekly basis.  I’m still tweaking flour (so far 2 1/2 cups King Arthur bread flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat, dusting agent (what to dust the bread with before it goes into the oven) and cooking time, but I’ve been producing some beautiful and delicious loaves of bread.  I can also report that this bread makes the most brain-meltingly terrific grilled cheese sandwiches with some good cheddar and a nice gentle fry in a pan with some butter. I’m looking forward to Jim Lahey’s new book, My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method with giddy anticipation.