The Scone Chronicles

My favorite part of Froissart's Chronicles covers the battles between the English and the Scots which were interwoven into the larger story of the Hundred Years' War. The Scots ride to war with bags of porridge oats under their saddles and flat stones tied on behind, for cooking said oats into cakes whenever there's a lull in the fighting. Or perhaps I've got that backwards, and it's the stones under the saddles and the porridge oats tied on behind -- I'm banging this out from memory and would welcome correction, O historians of note. But the oats under the saddles would make more sense, don't you think? And would be kinder to the horses, too. Either way, my haggis-eating ancestors spend a lot of the story vanishing and reappearing to fight, fortified with oats, while the English blunder around and get caught on the wrong side of the river from all their supplies and have to requisition an entire town, which is all a lot more cumbersome than baking scones on the fly.

We've been taking after those ancestors around here, not so much in haggis-eating and warfare as in frugality and the baking of scones. I do not, as it happens, have a bag to carry oats in, or a stone to cook them on, or a horse to transport bag, oats, stone, and myself about the countryside; when I consider all this, baking scones in my comfortable kitchen of a morning seems the height of ease and convenience.

I imagine my ancestors didn't carry cookbooks with them into battle. Neither do I use a recipe. When I sent scones with Amicus to his Latin class at church last month, I worried a little, because his classmates include Miss Patsy, who is from Glasgow, and Miss Gilda, who comes from Shropshire, both of whom would know at once if I'd screwed up the scone thing. Either they needed to perform acts of charity that day, or the scones I sent really were okay.

Here's what I do:

I have a big bowl, right? I don't know what size. Mixing-bowl size. I dump in roughly one-half-part rolled oats (nothing fancy or steel-cut, just the quick kind, from Aldi) and one-half-part self-rising flour. If I have wheat flour, I put some of that in, too. I add brown sugar or honey to taste (about half a cup brown sugar, maybe), then I pour in canola oil -- you could use butter, but I'm not generally that decadent -- enough to dampen the dry ingredients. Then I add milk to make a medium-firm dough. Don't want it too gushy, or it'll just spread on the baking sheet and you end up with not-very-sweet cookies. That happens around here sometimes, and people eat them up with expressions of delight, but ideally you want something a little more rounded and risen and hockey-puck shaped.

I stir all these ingredients together, then with my hands I form little hockey pucks and place them on the baking sheet. Or if I'm lazy, I just drop them from a spoon, and they don't look as tidy, but they taste just the same. I bake them for 25 minutes or so, and wah la. Breakfast. Or lunch. Or a snack. I lean on these a lot to fill people up.

I don't know how much these cost out per scone or anything, but they're a pretty cheap, quick thing to make. King Arthur flour improves the taste and nutritional value, but also drives up the cost. The ones I made this morning used Aldi quick oats, at about $1.79 a box, if memory serves me, and Aldi self-rising flour, at about . . . I forget. $1.39 a five-pound bag, maybe? I try to go as heavy on the oats and as light on the white flour as I can and still have them hold together and rise decently.

I've made a lunch variation on this theme, when we needed something to eat on the go, and I wanted to roll a complete meal, more or less, into something that could be held in the hand. I made the above batter, with less oatmeal and more flour (I think I used wheat flour, too, for this one) and less sweet stuff, then stirred in some grated cheddar cheese and a generous shaking of frozen chopped spinach. These baked up into cheese-spinach biscuits, and the children ate them up and asked for more. I happen to have the kind of weird children who will eat spinach and ask for more. Though I didn't do it that time, it occurs to me now that you could mix in some ham or bacon as well.

So . . . when you find yourself having to ride to war, and you need food you can carry under your saddle and bake on a stone, now you know what to take.