Pain Aux Raisins

Ok, so this week is spectacularly late. I kept looking at the recipe, reading about folding dough, chilling dough, and proving, and it just seemed far too much hassle. Especially since I was going to try and make it gluten free.

This weekend I finally got around to it. It has been a productive weekend- I woke up on Saturday actually in the mood to clean the house, so that got a thorough going over, and then Sunday started with an equally proactive mindset.

I used gluten free bread flour as the main base, with about 20g of glutinous rice flour and some xanthan gum making up the 350g. It ended up making a pretty good dough.

When it came to rolling out and folding the dough into three, after a false start I found that rolling it onto baking paper really helped with getting that fold without it falling to bits. I’ve found that gluten free dough is quite a bit more delicate than normal dough, and doesn’t stand up well to too much handling, so folding it using baking paper really worked.

I didn’t prove it for a whole hour – I had to turn the heating on ‘specially to give it some warmth, and I wasn’t going to throw money away on that! I have no idea if the prove was too long, too short, or just right (the Goldilocks effect!), but I can see lamination in the finished pastry when I cut it in half, so I think something went right.

Making the creme patissiere was great. After pouring the mixture into the saucepan it thickened up really nicely. It was so satisfying to watch I sang a little tune of celebration!

Rolling the dough into a sausage was not the most successful part of the process – it was too delicate to roll it as tightly as I wanted, which meant the spirals loosened quite a bit in the oven, but I am super happy with them overall. They do not taste gluten free (which might be the creme pat giving it moisture) and I couldn’t stop at just one!

Oh, and since I hate dried fruit (as I may have mentioned before!) I swapped the raisins for chocolate chips, which in my opinion is much yummier.

Overall, another successful bake, almost worth the convoluted recipe. Almost. But probably only on very special occasions!

And I am so thrilled that I seem to have achieved ‘lamination!’