Cheese and chive buns without yeast: flaky, ready in 35 minutes
Savoury buns on baking powder, made like British scones: cold butter rubbed into flour, grated cheese, a handful of chives and buttermilk that binds the dough in half a minute. No kneading, no waiting. Flaky, layered, with crisp edges of baked cheese. For soup, with eggs, for supper with butter when the bread has run out.
Your own work in that: 15 min.
- Dough 15 min
- Baking 18 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneRub the cold butter into the flour
Heat the oven to 200 °C and line a tray with paper. Sift the flour with the baking powder, salt and pepper. Cut the cold butter into cubes and rub into the flour with your fingertips until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs with pea-sized flecks of butter still visible.
Ingredients: 300 g plain flour · 2 tsp baking powder · ½ tsp salt · 80 g butter · 150 g hard cheese · 1 bunch chives · 200 ml buttermilk · ¼ tsp black pepper
TipThe butter flecks are the layers: in the oven they melt and leave gaps that the baking powder pushes open. Butter warmed in your hands gives dense, hard buns, so work fast, fingertips only.
Crumbs with butter flecks, quicklyAdd the cheese and chives
Grate the cheese coarsely and snip the chives finely. Toss both through the flour and butter so they are evenly spread.
Cheese coarse, chives finePour in the buttermilk and bring together briefly
Make a well, pour in the cold buttermilk and mix with a table knife, a dozen strokes, only until it comes together in a lumpy, ragged mass. The dough should look wrong: shaggy, with dry patches. Don't knead.
TipThis is the whole scone technique: the less you mix, the less gluten and the flakier the buns. A smooth, kneaded dough gives rubbery ones. Buttermilk and baking powder react at once, so from now you have 5 minutes to the oven.
A knife, a dozen strokes, it should look uglyPat and cut
Turn the dough onto a floured counter and press it with your hands (don't roll) into a round 3 cm thick. Cut into 8 wedges like a cake, or stamp out rounds with a glass. Set on the tray 3 cm apart.
Ingredients: 300 g plain flour · 2 tsp baking powder · ½ tsp salt · 80 g butter · 150 g hard cheese · 1 bunch chives · 200 ml buttermilk · ¼ tsp black pepper
Three centimetres, eight wedgesBrush and bake
Brush the tops with beaten egg, leaving the sides dry so the buns can rise. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake 16–18 minutes at 200 °C, until tall, golden, with the cheese on top baked crisp.
Ingredients: 1 pcs egg · 30 g hard cheese
TipEgg on the tops only: dried on the sides it glues the layers and the bun rises lopsided or not at all.
Egg on top, not on the sidesServe warm
Best straight from the oven, broken open, with butter. With soup, scrambled eggs, as supper. Refresh the next day 5 minutes at 180 °C; after two days they are dry.
Warm, broken open, with butter
Before you start
With bacon
60 g finely diced bacon, fried crisp and cooled, added with the cheese. The supper version.
Sweet scones
Instead of cheese and chives, 50 g sugar and 80 g raisins: classic scones for jam and whipped cream.
Flat, hard buns
Dough mixed too long, warm butter, or too long a wait before baking. Cold butter, a knife instead of hands, into the oven within 5 minutes.
