Shaping 24 Pounds of Scones with Bakeshop's Kim Boyce

Welcome back to Chef in the Kitchen, a recurring Eater photo feature where we boldly go where few diners have gone before — into Portland restaurant kitchens — to get a sneak peek of the chef du jour hard at work.

Grid View

[Avila/EPDX]

Baker Kim Boyce wants you to stop touching the dough. Boyce, owner of NE Sandy's Bakeshop and a recent James Beard Award-winner for her cookbook Good to the Grain, finishes 24-pound batches of dough — used to make 82 of her boysenberry scones — by hand, shaping each into a rustic "bird's nest" that holds a scoop of a housemade boysenberry jam.

According to Boyce, the 24-pound yield (representing about half of Bakeshop's regular recipe) features 19 pounds of white flour and light rye flour; nearly 4.5 pounds of sugar; and seven pounds of berries. The dry ingredients are combined with cream in the bakery's 60-quart mixer until "shaggy with both wet and dry areas," Boyce says. Boyce then finishes each scone by hand, careful not to overmix or overly squeeze the dough. And for home cooks looking toward her cookbook scone recipe, Boyce offers a pro tip: "Don't keep touching the dough! I can't say this enough," Boyce says. "It's the key to making scones with tender, crunchy edges... and the most difficult technique to teach people." (For lazy scone-lovers, there's always that 82-yield batch.)
· Bakeshop [Official site]
· All Previous Kim Boyce Coverage [Eater PDX]