Despite having almost permanently cold hands I’ve never been very good at making pastry.

I thought I’d man up, face my fears and give it another bash.

We love a real coffee with fresh croissant or Danish as breakfast-in-bed on a Sunday morning, so I thought I’d give pain aux raisins a try.

I used a combination of Dan Lepard’s and Paul Hollywood’s pastry recipes with a little ad libbing of my own along the way!

Pain aux raisins

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Ingredients

  

• For the starter
• 1 tsp fast-acting yeast
• 75 ml warm water
• 50 g strong white flour
• For the dough
• 125 ml cold whole milk
• 2 eggs
• 50 g caster sugar
• 250 g cold unsalted butter cut into 1-2cm cubes
• 300 g 00 flour plus extra for rolling
• 1 tsp salt
• Beaten egg to finish
• For the filling
• 50 g raisins soaked in rum or cold tea for at least an hour or overnight
• 25 g Demerara sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon or allspice
• 50 g soft butter

Instructions

 

• For the starter, in a warm bowl dissolve the yeast in the warm water, beat in the flour until smooth, cover and leave for an hour to bubble
  
• In an electric mixer whisk the milk, eggs and sugar into the starter
• Using a dough hook, work in the butter cubes, flour and salt
• Scoop the dough out on to a floured worktop and quickly work it into a ball
• Wrap in cling film or put into a zip-lock bag and refrigerate for a hour
• Roll out to 1cm thick. Fold it in by thirds, roll it out again as before, fold it in by thirds again, then wrap and chill for 30 minutes. Repeat this rolling & chilling sequence twice more, Leave the dough in the fridge for 8 hours or overnight to rest & rise slightly
• Roll a piece of dough to 30cm x 18cm x 1cm thick
• Mix the raisins, Demerara sugar, ground cinnamon and soft butter
• With a spatula, spread the mixture evenly over the rolled out dough
• Roll up tightly towards you along the length, so you have a short, fat log shape
• Cut into wheels about 1½cm wide. At this point you can wrap each piece individually in cling film and freeze
• Line a baking tray with non-stick parchment paper, put the prepared pastries on top, cover loosely with cling film and leave to rise somewhere warm until almost doubled in size (1-2 hours)
  
• Once risen, brush with beaten egg and bake at 200ºC (180ºC fan-assisted)/390ºF/gas mark 6 for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 180ºC (160ºC fan-assisted)/350ºF/gas mark 4 and bake for another 15-20 minutes, until crisp
• Leave to cool on the baking tray placed on a wire rack for 20-30mins
• Dust lightly with icing sugar