Scones are on the morning menu, but you don’t have any scones. You do have a bag of plain flour, no self-raising flour. And people who are expecting scones. Here are the numbers you came for, before anything else.
The Ratio, Stated First
Use 6 level teaspoons (24 g) of baking powder per 400 g plain flour, plus 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, with 250 ml milk soured with 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
That works out to 1 1/2 teaspoons (6 g) baking powder per 100 g of plain flour. Scale it to whatever is in your bag:
| Plain flour | Baking powder | Bicarbonate of soda |
|---|---|---|
| 200 g (1 2/3 cups) | 3 tsp (12 g) | 1/4 tsp |
| 300 g (2 1/2 cups) | 4 1/2 tsp (18 g) | 1/4 tsp |
| 400 g (3 1/4 cups) | 6 tsp (24 g) | 1/2 tsp |
| 500 g (4 cups) | 7 1/2 tsp (30 g) | 1/2 tsp |
One note on terminology before we go further, because two different people search this recipe. If you mean plain as in unflavoured, with no sultanas, this is that recipe as written. If you mean plain flour as in no self-raising flour in the house, this is also that recipe. There is a dried fruit variation further down for whoever wants it.
You will notice this is more baking powder than the ratio repeated on most pages, which is 2 teaspoons per 150 g. That figure is a reverse-engineering of what commercial self-raising flour contains, and commercial self-raising flour is a general-purpose blend calibrated for thin cakes and pancakes. A scone is not a thin cake. It is a short, fat-heavy, wet dough baked as a tall cylinder that has to climb 4 cm in under ten minutes before its crust sets. It needs to be raised harder, not equivalently.
There is a ceiling, and it matters. Past roughly 1 teaspoon of baking powder per 60 g of flour, scones dome, crack, sink in the middle and take on a metallic aftertaste. The ratio above sits at 1 teaspoon per 66 g, deliberately below that line.
Why Plain Flour Is the Better Scone Flour, Not the Compromise
This is the part that annoys people, so here is the argument in full.
Self-raising flour is plain flour with a clock running on it
Self-raising flour contains nothing exotic. It is soft plain flour that has been blended with a fixed dose of chemical raising agent, usually with a little salt, at the mill. There is no secret ingredient, no different starch, nothing your bowl of plain flour lacks.
What it does have is two disadvantages. The dose is fixed, so you cannot raise a scone harder than a pancake. And the raising agent begins losing potency the day it is bagged, then keeps losing it in a warm cupboard for however many months the bag sits there. A bag of self-raising flour opened in March and used in August is not delivering the lift printed on its label.
When you start from plain flour, you control freshness, you control the dose, and you control the protein. Those are three advantages, not a downgrade.
The 30-second baking powder freshness test
Dead baking powder is the single most common reason a batch of scones comes out flat. Test it before you commit 400 g of flour to the bowl.
Drop 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder into 60 ml (1/4 cup) of hot water. It should erupt immediately and vigorously, foaming over the surface within two seconds. A lazy trickle of small bubbles means it is spent. Baking powder loses measurable strength within six months of opening, faster in a humid kitchen, and there is no way to compensate by adding more without hitting the metallic ceiling described above.
Protein content, and why “plain flour” is not one thing worldwide
UK, Irish and Australian plain flour typically runs about 9 to 10 percent protein. That is close to ideal scone flour: enough structure to hold a tall rise, little enough gluten to stay short and tender.
North American all-purpose flour usually runs 10.5 to 11.5 percent protein. Handled the same way, it will produce a tougher, chewier, bread-like scone.
The correction for US and Canadian bakers: replace 50 g of the 400 g of all-purpose flour with 50 g of cornflour (cornstarch). That drops the effective protein by roughly a percentage point and shortens the crumb. Then stop mixing sooner than you think you should. Where a UK baker can fold the dough four times, fold three. Every extra pass develops gluten you do not want.
If the baking powder tin is empty or dead
Make your own single-acting version: 3 teaspoons cream of tartar plus 1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda replaces the 6 teaspoons of baking powder. Keep the additional 1/2 teaspoon of bicarb from the main list as well. This mixture is single-acting, meaning it fires once on contact with liquid rather than again in the oven heat, so the dough has to go into a preheated oven within ten minutes of mixing. No resting, no fridge, no phone calls.
If you have no round cutter
Either invert a drinking glass, dip the rim in flour and press straight down, or skip cutting altogether: pat the dough into a single round about 20 cm (8 inches) across and 3 cm deep, score it into 8 wedges most of the way through, and bake it as one piece. It rises just as tall and pulls apart along the scores. Stainless Steel Pastry rings also make for an ideal cutter.
The Pan Decides Whether the Ratio Delivers
This is the step almost every plain flour scone recipe leaves out, and it is the one that changes the result most visibly.
A dough carrying 6 teaspoons of baking powder and bicarbonate of soda is more alkaline than a self-raising batch. Alkaline doughs brown faster, and they brown fastest where they are in direct contact with metal. That means the base of a plain flour scone is racing toward dark brown while the top is still setting. What the dough sits on decides whether you get a pale-gold base and a straight vertical rise, or a scorched base and a scone that leans.
Two pan properties matter:
Conductivity and color. Aluminum conducts heat several times faster than steel, which means it spreads heat across its own surface instead of concentrating it in hot spots. A light, natural or anodized aluminum surface also reflects radiant heat rather than absorbing it the way dark steel and dark nonstick coatings do. On a dark, absorbent tray, the alkaline base of these scones can go from gold to bitter in ninety seconds. Fat Daddio’s anodized aluminum cookie sheets and natural aluminum baking sheet pans are uncoated and light in color, which is why the undersides set pale gold in the same window that the tops finish.
Rim height. A high-sided roasting tray shields the outer scones in the batch from the oven’s radiant heat while the middle ones get it full force. The result is a batch where the edge scones are paler, shorter and leaning inward toward the hotter centre. A rimless cookie sheet or a low-rim sheet pan leaves every scone in the batch equally exposed, so all ten rise at the same rate.
Anodized aluminium has a second advantage worth knowing for this specific recipe: the anodizing process creates a hard, nonreactive surface, so an acidified, alkaline-boosted dough will not pick up any metallic tang from the pan itself. If you bake often, the baking sheet pan sets let you get a second batch cut and ready while the first is in the oven, which matters when scones are best eaten inside an hour.
Variations
Fruit scones
Add 100 g (2/3 cup) of sultanas, raisins or dried cranberries after rubbing in the butter and before adding the liquid. Toss them in the dry mix so they are coated in flour, which keeps them suspended rather than sinking to the base where they burn.
Cheese scones
Drop the sugar to 1 teaspoon, add 100 g (1 cup) of grated mature cheddar and 1/2 teaspoon of mustard powder to the dry ingredients, and hold back a little cheese to scatter on top in the last 4 minutes.
Spiced scones
Add 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg to the dry ingredients. Good with the fruit version.
Ingredients
Makes 10 scones cut with a 6 cm (2 1/2 inch) cutter, or 8 wedges if you have no cutter.
– 400 g plain flour (3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour). US bakers: use 350 g all-purpose plus 50 g cornflour or cornstarch.
– 6 level teaspoons baking powder (24 g), fresh, ideally aluminium-free
– 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
– 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
– 50 g caster or granulated sugar (1/4 cup)
– 100 g cold unsalted butter (7 tablespoons), cut into 1 cm cubes and returned to the fridge
– 250 ml whole milk (1 cup) mixed with 1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar. If you have buttermilk, use 250 ml of it and skip the lemon juice.
– 1 tablespoon milk or 1 beaten egg, to glaze (optional)
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 425° F (220° C), or 400° F (200° C) for fan and convection ovens. Set a rack in the upper third. Scones need a genuinely hot oven so the lift happens before the crust sets. Do not preheat the baking sheet, or the butter will melt on contact and the scones will spread.
- Sour the milk. Stir 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into the 250 ml of milk and leave it for 5 minutes. It will thicken slightly and look faintly curdled. That is correct, and that acid is what the bicarbonate of soda needs to work.
- Whisk the dry ingredients together for a full 30 seconds. Flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and sugar. Six teaspoons of baking powder is a lot to distribute, and a pocket of it left undispersed is what makes one bite taste soapy.
- Rub in the cold butter to a coarse, uneven crumb. Use fingertips or a pastry blender and stop while you can still see flattened, pea-sized flakes of butter. Do not chase fine sand. Those visible flakes turn to steam in the oven and are where flakiness and tenderness come from.
- Add the soured milk all at once and cut it in with a table knife. Use a slicing, sweeping motion rather than stirring. Stop the moment there are no dry pockets left, while the dough still looks scruffy and shaggy. It should feel wetter and stickier than you expect. A dry scone dough cannot rise.
- Tip onto a lightly floured surface and fold 3 or 4 times only. Press, fold in half, turn, press again. This builds the horizontal layers that let a finished scone break cleanly in two.
- Pat, do not roll, to a depth of at least 2.5 cm (1 inch), and 3 cm (1 1/4 inches) if you want maximum height. Check it against your knuckle or a ruler. Thin dough is the second most common cause of flat scones after dead baking powder.
- Cut straight down and lift straight up. Do not twist the cutter. Twisting seals and shears the outer edge, and that edge then cannot expand evenly, which is exactly why one side of a scone rises higher than the other. Press the offcuts together gently by hand and pat out again. Do not re-knead them.
- Space the scones 4 to 5 cm (1 1/2 to 2 inches) apart on an ungreased or lightly floured flat aluminium baking sheet. An 18 x 13 inch sheet (SP-HALF) takes 8 to 10 rounds with proper gaps. Brush the tops with milk or beaten egg if you like, keeping the glaze off the sides so it cannot glue the rise down.
- Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until well risen, pale gold on top and dry at the sides. If you must chill the cut rounds before baking, cover and refrigerate for no more than 30 minutes. Past an hour, lift starts to decline.
- Cool 5 minutes on a wire rack, then split by hand, never with a knife. A properly made scone breaks along a clean horizontal line with almost no pressure.
Troubleshooting
One side rose higher than the other. The cutter was twisted, or the dough was patted unevenly, or a high-rimmed tray shielded that side from heat. Cut straight down, check depth across the whole slab, and use a flat or low-rim sheet.
They came out flat. In order of likelihood: dead baking powder, dough patted thinner than 2.5 cm, butter that warmed up during rubbing in, over-mixing after the liquid went in, or an oven that had not fully reached temperature.
They spread sideways instead of up. Too much liquid, or the butter melted before baking. Chill the cut rounds for 15 minutes and try again on a room-temperature sheet.
They taste soapy or metallic. Either the raising agents were not whisked evenly through the flour, or the bicarbonate of soda had no acid to react with, or the baking powder contains sodium aluminium sulphate. Whisk longer, keep the soured milk, and buy aluminium-free next time.
They domed, cracked and sank in the middle. Too much raising agent. You went past the 1 teaspoon per 60 g ceiling. Come back to 1 1/2 teaspoons per 100 g.
The bottoms are dark brown and slightly bitter. A dark or nonstick tray, or a high rim trapping heat underneath. Switch to a light aluminium sheet and move the rack up.
They are tough and dry. High-protein flour plus too much handling. If you are using North American all-purpose, make the cornflour swap and fold one time fewer.
Does milk soured with lemon juice really work instead of buttermilk? Yes. You need acid to react with the bicarbonate of soda and to tenderise the crumb, and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar per 250 ml of milk supplies it. Plain yoghurt thinned with milk to a pourable consistency works too.
Can the dough rest? Briefly. Cut rounds hold for 30 minutes covered in the fridge because commercial baking powder is double-acting and keeps a second reaction in reserve for the oven. If you made the cream of tartar substitute, bake within ten minutes.
Freezing
Unbaked: freeze the cut rounds in a single layer on the baking sheet until solid, then bag them. Bake from frozen at 425° F (220° C), adding 3 to 4 minutes. They rise slightly taller from frozen because the butter stays solid longer.
Baked: cool completely, bag and freeze for up to 1 month. Refresh from frozen at 350° F (175° C) for 5 to 6 minutes. Do not microwave them.
Serve Them Properly
Warm, split by hand, with jam and clotted cream. Which goes on first is a Devon and Cornwall argument that has run for over a century and that this post declines to enter. If you want the background, the history of the scone is worth ten minutes.
If you enjoyed how the the flour math worked out here, the same logic runs through our classic white bread recipe, our no-knead bread recipe, and our white cake recipe. All apply the same thinking about protein and tenderness to cake crumb.
