Duo of Pain Aux Raisins with Freshly Milled Rouge de Bordeaux Flour
My fear of losing my Great Grandma Goose began many years before I actually did. For years before her death, on every phone call I’d try to quietly keep my tears to myself. To me, she was a grandma that dreams were made of. To visit her was to escape into a world with boundaries but not rules. As we arrived, she was always standing on the porch waving wildly to us, greeting us with open arms while we made a quick decision -- run for the crystal candy bowl to grab a butterscotch hard candy, or run through the kitchen, stopping momentarily to grab the bag of bread crusts that she saved for our visit, and then right out to the pond to feed the waddling and squawking ducks and geese.
A visit to Goose was one in which time stood still. Days were filled with morning swims in the community pool, afternoons lazing about reading her extra-large print Reader's Digest magazines, evenings spent with her siblings playing cards and eating pistachio ice cream, and late nights on her porch eating strawberry shortcake. At the end of the night my sister and I would clamor over who got to sleep in her cozy bed, snug with pink crocheted afghans. If we didn’t get to sleep in her bed we slept in the guest bedroom, on a pullout couch surrounded by colorful clowns, many sewn or crocheted by Goose or her friends. While that too was cozy, it was equally terrifying!
During one of the last years that she was still traveling, she rode the Amtrak train down to my grandma's house in Southern California for Thanksgiving. Many of the family came and went that day, cooking and visiting until we all gathered at the dinner table. Goose made the pie dough and the pies, saving the scrap dough for the grandkids. Once together, we rolled out the scraps, spread softened butter over the dough and dusted the surface generously with cinnamon sugar. We then rolled the dough into a spiral, cut slices a finger-width wide and placed them onto a cookie sheet to bake until they were golden and crispy, with the buttery cinnamon sugar oozing onto the pan and caramelizing at the edges.
While the pinwheels cooled, she and I went for a walk in the neighborhood. By this time she needed a bit of stability so she looped her arm through mine while we slowly made our way around a few blocks.
It’s these food memories that guide me in the bakery. A place where I can take humble homespun treats and turn them into something that meets the elegance of the pastries that we make at the bakery, sharing them with all of those who appreciate them.
Sometimes we need a use for the scrap dough that accumulates during the making of our croissants. One day we came up with the idea of making our version of Pain aux Raisins, a classic French pastry that incorporates some of the techniques I learned from Goose. We spread vanilla bean pastry cream over the surface of croissant dough made with freshly-milled Rouge de Bordeaux flour, dot it with rum-soaked golden and dark raisins, and roll it up into spirals. Then we slice the dough into pieces, giving the ends a tuck before placing them in muffin tins. As they bake, they swell and color into soft pillow buns which are tossed in cinnamon sugar before they cool.
Our secret item this weekend is a duo of Pain aux Raisins. Available this week for our newsletter subscribers only, so be sure to join our email list for access to all of our weekly specials.
Enjoy,