While they may not get the attention that goes to our corned beef, coffee cakes, artisan cheese, or fried chicken, or Miss Kim’s traditional Korean cooking, I have long believed that the Bakehouse’s Ginger Scones are, by far, one of the best things we make!
In the fall of 2007, journalist and friend Corby Kummer warned in The Atlantic:
Scones are among the pastry family’s most frequently abused members. Even in England, which you might think would be the home of the tenderest and best, the average scone is a dense and powdery affair, with only a few sad raisins to relieve the monotony.
If what Corby was warning about was at one end of the scone continuum, what the Bakehouse bakers craft is at the other—exceptional, creamy, buttery, gingery, light, cakey culinary marvels!
The Ginger Scones have been great ever since we started making them many years ago. And this month, like the Cultured Butter Croissants I wrote about last week, they just got even better when we began making them with the exceptional Cultured Butter from the good folks at Vermont Creamery. By coincidence—or actually not—Corby Kummer also mentioned that self-same cultured butter:
Allison Hooper, [Vermont Creamery] co-founder, also makes an excellent cultured butter—meaning butter with actual flavor—that would be great over hot scones.
Or, as we have discovered over the last couple of weeks, in the scones as well as on them!
Six months after his scone piece came out, Corby did a full feature in The Atlantic on butter, in which he sang the praises of cultured butter.
Only culture can bring lasting greatness. I mean bacterial culture. Bacteria give butter a rounded, full flavor—they “mature” cream, so that the butter-maker churns the equivalent of the French crème fraîche, or very lightly soured cream. The subtle, milky, barely tangy flavor heightens butter’s natural sweetness and gives cultured butter far more interest than sweet-cream butter ever has.
Before industrialization, farmhouse butter was almost always made with matured cream. While the cream was stored until there was enough to churn and the time to churn it, it naturally developed flavor from bacteria in the air. Sweet-cream butter is largely a postwar phenomenon, a result of the rise of industrial dairies, which can churn cream as soon as it is separated from milk.
If you like the Ginger Scones (or the Bakehouse’s Currant or Lemon Scones), the background and the recipe are in the marvelous Zingerman’s Bakehouse cookbook that managing partners Amy Emberling and Frank Carollo co-authored. Since the book came out, Frank has retired, and longtime manager Jaison Restrick has become a partner, but the recipes haven’t changed other than the butter upgrade. As Amy explains in the sidebar to the recipe in the book, scones come from an ancient Scottish culinary tradition. They were originally baked on griddles—or as they say in old Scots, “girdles”—and have nearly five centuries of history behind them. Back in the day, oats and barley were likely used more often than wheat, but really, any grain one had could and would be made into a scone. Gradually, scones traveled south and gained a good deal of popularity in England in the early 20th century.
The Bakehouse Ginger Scones are made, as Frank always would say, with “just enough flour to hold the butter and heavy cream together.” We spike the dough with spicy cubes of crystallized ginger from the South Pacific. Dipped first into sugar syrup, then dusted with coarse sugar crystals, the ginger pieces add a delicate bit of crunch when you bite into one. Seriously—if you’re coming by for one at the Bakeshop, Next Door, the Roadhouse, or the Coffee Company, you might want to grab a second. One to nibble in the moment, the other for later, when you start thinking about how darned delicious the first one was!
In 1982, Ari Weinzweig, along with his partner Paul Saginaw, founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen with a $20,000 bank loan, a Russian History degree from the University of Michigan, 4 years of experience washing dishes, cooking and managing in restaurant kitchens and chutzpah from his hometown of Chicago. They opened the doors with 2 employees and a small selection of specialty foods and exceptional sandwiches.
Today, Zingerman’s Delicatessen is a nationally renowned food icon and the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has grown to 10 businesses with over 750 employees and over $55 million in annual revenue. Aside from the Delicatessen, these businesses include Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Coffee Company, Creamery, Roadhouse, Mail Order, ZingTrain, Candy Manufactory, Cornman Farms and a Korean restaurant that is scheduled to open in 2016. No two businesses in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses are alike but they all share the same Vision and Guiding Principles and deliver “The Zingerman’s Experience” with passion and commitment.
Besides being the Co-Founding Partner and being actively engaged in some aspect of the day-to-day operations and governance of nearly every business in the Zingerman’s Community, Ari Weinzweig is also a prolific writer. His most recent publications are the first 4 of his 6 book series Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading Series: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business (Part 1), Being a Better Leader (Part 2), Managing Ourselves (Part 3) and the newly-released Part 4, The Power of Beliefs in Business. Earlier books include the Zingerman’s Guides to Giving Great Service, Better Bacon, Good Eating, Good Olive Oil, Good Vinegar and Good Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Ari regularly travels across the country (and world) on behalf of ZingTrain, teaching organizations and businesses about Zingerman’s approach to business. He is a sought-after Keynote speaker, having delivered keynotes for Inc. 500, Microsoft Expo Spring Conference, Great Game of Business Gathering of Games, Positive Business Conference at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, American Society for Quality (ASQ), and the American Cheese Society. Most recently, Ari and Paul Saginaw were invited to address an audience of 50,000 for the University of Michigan 2015 Spring Commencement.
One of Zingerman’s Guiding Principles is being an active part of the community and in 1988, Zingerman’s was instrumental in the founding of Food Gatherers, a food rescue program that delivers over 5 million pounds of food each year to the hungry residents of Washtenaw county. Every year Zingerman’s donates 10% of its previous years profits to local community organizations and non-profits. Ari has served on the board of The Ark, the longest continuously operating folk music venue in America.
Over the decades, the Zingerman’s founding partners have consistently been the recipients of public recognition from a variety of diverse organizations. In April 1995, Ari and Paul were awarded the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County’s first Humanitarian Award. In 2006, Ari was recognized as one of the “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America” by the James Beard Foundation. In 2007, Ari and Paul were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Bon Appetit magazine for their work in the food industry. Ari was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Cheese Society in 2014. And Ari’s book, Building a Great Business was on Inc. magazine’s list of Best Books for Business Leaders.
Notwithstanding the awards, being engaged on a daily basis in the work of 10 businesses and 21 partners, writing books on business and in-depth articles on food for the Zingerman’s newsletter, Ari finds time to be a voracious reader. He acquires and reads more books than he can find room for. Ari might soon find himself the owner of the largest collection of Anarchist books in Ann Arbor outside the Labadie collection at the University of Michigan library!
I wish we had postings of the calorie count of the scones and other items.
Hi Beverly! You can find all of our ingredients and nutritional information on our website.