NOM

One very positive thing about Utah is its scones. Utah scones are different from the rest of the scones. The Brits are forever embroiled with Americans as to what is a scone and what is a biscuit, but Mormons bypass all of that with a sweet version of Navajo fry bread.

The Navajos made their fry bread savory and frequently in the form of tacos, but Mormons with their hankering for sweets turned this savory item into a sweet breakfast treat and called it Utah Scones. This is an item that truly deserved to be celebrated.

https://www.chelseasmessyapron.com/utah-scones/



One place you can always find Utah scones it at the appropriately named, Chuck-A-Rama.

When I go on the "Rez" (reservation) or to the Powwows, I see fry bread done in both a savory and a sweet configuration. My mother, who was not raised Mormon was taught by my grandmother to make the sweet scones from when she was a child. Love both versions.

So the Native Americans/Indians originated these? What kind of flour do they use?

deacon blues wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 8:42 am So the Native Americans/Indians originated these? What kind of flour do they use?

Doubtful that they were “invented” by American Natives, as they are made with refined white flour. More like they were adopted by Natives as easier to use white flour than grinding corn themselves. They are just bread dough rolled thin, then deep fried, so they were probably made in Europe as far back as white flour existed. But Native Americans had been frying corn tortillas (similar in many Native populations even if they were not called tortillas” in the native language) in fat for generations, so a switch from corn flour to refined white flour was easy. So, like Americans would not recognize spaghetti if they came across its origins as oriental noodles, but they adopted it and loved it. Did Navaho Fry Bread originate with the Navaho? Did Spaghetti originate with the Italians?

I saw a demonstration of the original Navaho Fry Bread, where the woman ground the corn on a stone grinder, chewing some of it to make it sweet (saliva turns the corn starch to sugar), then adding water and patting it out, then deep frying it in animal fat. We got a chance to try her fry bread, but my children all kind of gagged on her method of sweetening it and refused.

alas wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 11:56 am

deacon blues wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 8:42 am So the Native Americans/Indians originated these? What kind of flour do they use?

Doubtful that they were “invented” by American Natives, as they are made with refined white flour.

Alas is correct here. Here's a little history (sad) if anyone is interested.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/637 ... al-history

This is the type of scone that I was raised on. I still love the occasional one with a drizzle of honey butter.

This has caused me a lot of confusion since I moved to the east coast and here they have the traditional British style scones. I have to make my own.

Yeah, the history of fried bread items can easily be traced to India and the Middle East. We know such stuff has been around since the Iron Age. Heck, there could have been a variation before the first wave of hominids left Africa.

None of that detracts from Utah scones with maple syrup, powdered sugar, honey butter, or jam. As they say in Utah, "That's for durn tootin' and I'm not just whistling Helen Marr Kimball."

The restaurants that make good scones are getting few and far between. We go to them above any other, and have seen several go out of business or stop doing scones. And the ones at Puke a Rama are too thick. They use bread dough that is an inch or more thick, and then don’t let it rise enough, so you have heavy doughy biscuits that are deep fried. Need to roll the dough to 1/2 inch, then wait 20 minutes or so, then drop them in about 1 inch of hot lard. Lard makes them better. But, OK, I don’t have it in the house any more, so I am no longer a purest. I use olive oil as it is the only oil I use and really, with just two of us I don’t even go through much of that.

If you are being so diet conscious that you worry about the lard, what the blank are you eating them for in the first place. Refined white flour, cooked in oil, then covered in sweet gunk.

I have compromised by having them rarely and just lightly sprinkled with powdered sugar. About how they come served by my local breakfast place.

The easiest way to cook them is get Rhodes frozen white biscuits, thaw, roll to 1/2 inch and fry. With only two of us diabetics at home any longer, cooking more than two at a meal is totally diet blowing. So, the frozen, real yeast bread dough is best because I don’t have a whole two loaves worth of bread to waste. I can pull out what I want and leave the rest frozen.

I know someone who swears his grandmother invented Navajo tacos while serving an LDS mission in Arizona. The story goes that the Navajo women ran out of ingredients for their tortillas so, being the great missionary that she was, she fried up some scones for them to use as substitutes. She then went on to invent sliced bread and the transistor.

So on this latest Masterchef episode, a guy from Utah made a Utah style scone. Gordon Ramsey was not impressed.

My mom, of Scandinavian heritage called them doughgads. In Google, I find only reference to dough gods which seem to be the same thing.

I love my Utah Scone with shaved carrots and parsnips on top.

Culper Jr. wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:29 pm So on this latest Masterchef episode, a guy from Utah made a Utah style scone. Gordon Ramsey was not impressed.

And yet Gordon Ramsey will happily wolf down Yorkshire puddings! Granted that some Utah scones are better than others. Perhaps he needs to taste one fried by Alas.