Crackling scones – Tepertős pogácsa

by | Jun 9, 2015 | Breads, buns & biscuits

Accroding to historians scones (or pogácsa in Hungarian) are one of the oldest biscuits that were already baked  in the time of the Hungarian conquest. Scones are small, round biscuits popular mainly in the Carpathian Basin and on the Balkans. Their name derives from the word focacea (baked dough), which is derivative of the Latin word “focus” that means fire. The word pogácsa was taken over from the South Slavic languages (it’s called pogača in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia).

In Hungary scones are typically served as a welcome snack, cheese, crackling and curd cheese are the most liked flavours. Crackling scones are made of laminated yeast dough, which contains lard, ground or finely chopped cracklings, and seasoned with salt and black pepper. Folding is not as fiddly as you might think, it’s rather time consuming than challenging. The dough has to be folded three times, taking a 30 minute break between two foldings.

Buying cracklings doesn’t put us to great trouble as every butcher provides them in Hungary, but I know that availability in other countries isn’t obvious and getting hold of fresh cracklings could be an obstacle. But if you can obtain pork fat, you can make cracklings at home by rendering lard.

Tepertős pogácsa - Crackling scones
Crackling scones – Tepertős pogácsa – photo: zserbo.com

Ingredients:

  • 500 g (~4 cups) flour
  • 150 ml (~2/3 cup) milk
  • 25 g (~3/4 oz) fresh yeast (2 1/2 tsp dry yeast)
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 60 g (~2 1/4 oz) sour cream
  • 100 g (~3 1/2 oz) lard
  • 15 g (~3 tsp) salt
  • 250 g (~1/2 lb) ground cracklings
  • 2 tsp black pepper
  • 1 egg for egg wash

In lukewarm milk dissolve yeast with half teaspoon of sugar.

Sift the flour in a bowl and rub lard in with your fingertips. Add egg, sour cream, salt and activated yeast, and knead into a smooth dough until pliable and soft.

On a floured surface roll out the dough into a 5 mm thin rectangel. Spread ground cracklings evenly all over the top and sprinkle with black pepper.

Fold up the dough as you can see on the photos below.

Crackling scones folding
photo: zserbo.com

Cover dough and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Repeat the procedure: roll out & fold -> rest for 30 minutes -> roll out & fold -> rest for 30 minutes
Roll out the dough to 2 cm thickness and score the top with a knife (don’t cut through).

Crackling scones
photo: zserbo.com

Cut out the scones with a small biscuit cutter. Reroll the dough scraps and cut more rounds. Place the scones on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Spread the tops with beaten egg. Leave the scones to rise for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 220°C / 428°F. Bake the scones for 15 minutes.

Crackling scones are the best on the day they were made.

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2 Comments

  1. So happy to find this site. I cook a lot of Hungarian dishes, having been born there, but these recipes are not the usual ones. Thank you! Kozsonom es jo etvagyat!

    • Thank you Kati. My goal is to show lesser-known recipes that are important parts of our cuisine.

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You often ask me what kind of cottage cheese (or curd cheese or farmer's cheese - call it what you want) I use in the recipes. In Hungary the store-bought cottage cheese is dry and crumbly as you can see in the picture. So if a recipe calls for túró, I mean this type. If you can't obtain túró, you can try to make your own from whole milk. Click on the link below.

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In Hungary metric units are in use, all the recipes on this website are based on this system, so a kitchen scale is necessary. Since I’m not familiar with cup as a measurement unit, I convert grams to cups by using an online converter. The values in brackets, therefore, are only approximate volumes, so, please, double-check them before you start cooking.

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