Savory (Dried) Tomato Scones

Towards the end of the summer we had our farm kitchen dehydrator working overtime, mostly on cherry tomatoes. If you’ve never tried a dried cherry tomato, I strongly suggest you reserve a few pints next year to do just that. Their flavor intensifies and their uses are limitless. Plus, they keep incredibly well! Knowing I can reconstitute them in water, and puree them into a sauce, paste, soup, etc makes me wonder why I would ever preserve tomatoes any other way. That is, until I remember how delicious roasted tomatoes are….but back to the tomato crisps…

This recent stormy, cool, weather inspired us to use them in a breakfast baking project: savory scones! If you’ve never tried savory scones, add it to your list of “kitchen must-dos” right under “dehydrate tomatoes.” After rehydrating the tomatoes in some warm water, while preparing the other ingredients, they get tossed together with some white cheddar cheese and softened onions, added into the dough, and result in a wonderful winter morning (or afternoon, or evening) treat - known in our farm kitchen as “pizza scones.”

The base scone recipe we use is a slightly adapted version of the Tartine Buttermilk Scone recipe (which, if you’ve never tried making, should add it to that now growing list of kitchen “must dos”), but if you have a favorite scone or biscuit recipe, I’m sure it would work just as well. The tomatoes, cheese, and onions get added in after incorporating the butter, but before adding the buttermilk. One more note before we dive in: you can either shred or cube the cheese, but you’ll have slightly different results depending what you choose. Cubing it is my preference as it results in pockets of gooey, melty, cheese (some of which also spills out and gets nice and crispy on the edges) throughout. Shredding the cheese gives you less of that melty cheese factor but more of an incorporated cheese-flavor-party throughout. Try doing a mix of the two!

Ok - one more note: the recipe yields a lot of scones. But, the dough freezes really well. I recommend making the full recipe, baking half right away and freezing the other half for a later rainy day! When baking the frozen dough, follow the same instruction, but they might need a few (5-10) minutes more bake time.

Savory Tomato Scones

adapted from Tartine’s Lemony Buttermilk Scones

Recipe makes 16-18 scones

Ingredients:

3/4 cup dried cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup white cheddar, cubed ~1/4” (the smaller the cube, the better)

1/2 white onion, chopped

4 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup plus 2 tablespoon cold, unsalted, butter cut into 1/2” cubes

2 cup buttermilk

3 tablespoon melted butter

onion sugar for sprinkling (optional - any sweet/savory flakey seasoning would be great!)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. (If you plan to bake the full recipe, prepare 2 baking sheets)

2. In a small bowl, soak the dried cherry tomatoes in warm water (about 10 minutes or so, while you prepare other ingredients), then drain and set aside on a towel to dry a bit.

3. In a medium heavy bottomed pan, heat a small amount of olive oil or butter and add the onions. Season with salt & pepper and sautee until softened. Let cool.

4. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. Add the cubes of butter to the dry ingredients and using the back of a fork, or your hands, incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients. It should form (uneven) pea-sized lumps.

5. Add the tomatoes, cubed cheese, and onion to the bowl. Using your hands, gently toss the add-ins into the flour/butter mixture until they are evenly distributed. Then add in the buttermilk and gently mix with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes together to form a shaggy dough. You may need to use your hands to gently squeeze it together, but be careful not to overwork the dough.

6. Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and divide the dough in half. Working with one half at a time, gently form/pat each dough into a round that is roughly 12” wide and 1 1/2” thick. Cut the round into 8 triangles (see photos above) and transfer to prepared baking sheet. (If you plan to freeze half of the dough, prepare the round, cut the triangles, and then wrap in plastic wrap or a sealable container before freezing.)

7. Brush triangles with melted butter and sprinkle with onion sugar, if using.

8. Place in preheated oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the tops of scones are lightly browned.

9. Remove from oven, let cool slightly, and enjoy!