Tea Biscuits & A Baker's Dream Giveaway

Let me take you back in time for a few minutes….

The year is somewhere between 1980-1984. The place is South Philadelphia. The scene is my mom and I; early on Sunday mornings walking the 7 blocks from our row home to the Termini Brother’s Bakery (a Philadelphia institution). Waiting in line for the tea biscuits that would come fresh out of the oven. I remember this as if it were yesterday…Sunday morning tea biscuits were a special treat. We would eat these flakey raisin studded scones toasted and spread with butter.

Fast forward:

It’s 2012. I’m living in Phoenix Arizona. My mom who now lives just a few miles away is seated with me at my kitchen table. In front of us is a plate of tea biscuits. Not Termini’s but ones I recreated during a recent Virtual Potluck event with King Arthur Flour and Red Star Yeast.

All of the VP bloggers were given products from both Red Star Yeast and King Arthur’s Flour…two quality companies for obtaining all of your baking needs. The task was to come up with a recipe using these products. Sounds easy, right? Well one of the items I was given was a sourdough starter. And I've never worked with a starter before so this was a challenge for me.

There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with a sourdough starter…or so it seemed at first. Care and feeding of dough; is not something I was used to.  But I quickly realized that there really isn’t much too it and the possibilities are endless of what you can make with it. (there are over 2,000 recipes available online)

Anyway, back to the tea biscuits. I went with a pretty basic sourdough scone recipe; added some golden raisins and did an egg wash on top to get the brown color I remembered. The result was delicious....not quite the flakey texture of Termini's but still really good. I will definitely make these again. 

Tea Biscuits

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup golden raisins
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tarter
1/3 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into slices
1 1/4 cups sourdough starter
egg wash

Preheat an oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle two baking sheets lightly with flour.

Whisk together the flour, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, sugar, and golden raisins. Cut in the slices of butter with a knife or pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the sourdough starter and mix by hand to form a soft dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Using a floured rolling pin, roll dough into a 1/2-inch thick round. Use a biscuit cutter to cut into circles and place the scones on the prepared baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Re-roll dough if needed.

Lightly brush the tops of each scone with the egg wash. Bake until the scones just start to turn golden ~15 minutes. Remove from baking sheets and cool.

Enter to win A Baker's Dream Giveaway!

One lucky winner will receive from King Arthur Flour one (1) dough whisk, one (1) coupon for a bag of flour in the supermarket, one (1) sourdough starter, and one (1) bag of Pumpernickel Flour. But that's not all! Red Star Yeast is adding three (3) strips of yeast, one (1) bread loaf pan, one (1) apron, and one (1) bread knife to this baking package!

There are several ways to enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post; tell me what you would make if you win.
2. Follow King Arthur Flour on Facebook or Twitter and let me know you did
3. Follow Red Star Yeast on Facebook or Twitter and let me know here
4. Comment on one of the other VP posts and don't forget to let me know
5. Tweet about the contest and let me know

Contest ends midnight EST on 6/10/2012.