Classic Scones

Make it step by step

1. Whisk the flour, baking powder, fine salt and caster sugar together in a large bowl.
2. Rub in the cold butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs and no lumps of butter are left.
3. Pour in the 175ml of cold milk all at once.
4. Cut it through with a table knife, turning the bowl as you go, until the dough comes together soft and slightly sticky with no dry flour left.
5. Stop the moment it holds together. Scone dough has no long prove to soften the gluten you develop, so a worked dough bakes out tough, tight and close-grained.
6. Tip the dough onto a floured worktop.
7. Pat it out with your hands to a slab 3cm thick, rather than rolling it. Scones cut from a 2cm slab never get tall.
8. Fold the slab in half and pat it back to 3cm once, which builds the seam the baked scone splits along.
9. Cut rounds with a floured 6cm cutter, pressing straight down and lifting straight up.
10. Never twist the cutter. Twisting drags and seals the cut edge, and a sealed edge rises in a lean instead of straight up.
11. Push the offcuts together with as little handling as you can manage and cut the last two.
12. Set the scones on a lined tray with about 3cm between them.
13. Chill them for 15 minutes while the oven heats to 220C/425F.
14. Beat the egg with the tablespoon of milk.
15. Brush the tops only, keeping the glaze off the cut sides. Egg running down the side glues the seam shut and the scone cannot open there.
16. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until they have risen to about twice their height and the tops are deep gold.
17. Lift one off the tray and knock the base. It should feel light for its size and sound hollow.
18. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes.
19. Split them by pulling them apart at the seam with your thumbs rather than cutting them.
20. Serve with the jam and the clotted cream.
21. Eat them the day they are baked. A chemically raised dough carries no fat to speak of and stales within hours, and by tomorrow they are only good toasted.