Susan Jung’s quick bread recipes for the time-starved – no yeast required

I have a few recipes for quick breads that I make when Ineed something hearty to accompany a main course but don’t want to prepare potatoes, rice or another starch. These breads don’t contain yeast, obviously, because it would take too long for the dough to rise. The scones and cornbread make a great base for a picnic lunch: pack them along with salads, charcuterie, cheese and fruit for a quick and easy meal.

Cheddar and spring-onion scones

This is a recipe from the first bakery I worked at, in San Francisco. The bakery is closed now but I still use some of the recipes, with the savoury scone being one of my favourites.

Because I like consistency, I really dislike scones (and many other baked goods) that are rolled out before being cut into rounds with a cookie cutter. After cutting out the first batch of scones, recipes will advise you to gather the scraps and then re-roll them. The problem is that the second batch, using the re-rolled scraps – is not as tender as the first. Sometimes this can’t be helped – when you’re making individual-serving tarts, for instance, because it would be a lot more work to roll out each small shell one by one. But with scones of all types, I make them into squares (by rolling the dough into a rectangle then cutting them into individual pieces) or sectors (by patting the dough into discs then cutting them into wedges). This way, there aren’t any scraps of dough left to re-roll, so all of them should be equally flaky and tender.

390 grams plain (all-purpose) flour
½ tsp fine sea salt
2½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
170 grams unsalted butter, chilled
45 grams grainy mustard
115 grams cheddar cheese, grated
70 grams spring onions, sliced about 3mm thick
245ml buttermilk, chilled (I use 20ml dried buttermilk powder mixed with 225ml cold water)
1 egg

Put the flour and salt into a medium-sized bowl. Sieve the baking powder and baking soda directly on top and mix thoroughly. Cut the butter into 1cm chunks and add them to the bowl. Mix so the flour mixture coats the chunks of butter. Use your fingertips to pinch the chunks of butter into smaller pieces, breaking them up until they are about the size of peas. Mix in the mustard, cheese and spring onions. Add about 225ml of the buttermilk and mix with your fingertips to make a damp (but not wet and sticky) dough with just a few dry patches. If the dough is too dry, drizzle in the remaining buttermilk. Turn the dough onto a very lightly floured work surface and pat it with your hands into a rectangle that’s about 30cm x 15cm. Fold the dough in half so it’s a 15cm square. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes while preheating the oven to 225 degrees Celsius.