Pain de mie au lait et fruits secs

French fruit scone bread

Peter Flynn

After driving back across France we stayed in Roscoff at the Hotel Le Temps de Vivre, where the breakfast included some interesting pain de mie. We searched the town for a bakery that had it, and brought some home, so I recently tried to find a way to make something similar myself, and came up with this recipe from Laura VGP on vg-zone.net, which I halved and adapted, first for the Panasonic BreadBakery machine and more recently (more milk) for the Lakeland machine. Merci, Laura!

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Heat your (fan) oven to 240°C. Prep time: 15 minutes + 3½ hours (knead + prove). Cooking time: 200 minutes.

Excellent at any time, but especially at breakfast

Ingredients

  • ½ tsp salt (see tip)
  • 200 g white fine flour [French T45 or Italian 00]
  • 2 tsp muscovado dark sugar
  • 1½ tsp dried yeast
  • 200 ml milk (or Laura used soy milk)
  • 25 g butter (or margarine)
  • 30 g dried raisins
  • 30 g dried apricots | chopped
  • 30 g toasted hazelnuts | peeled and split or crushed
  • 30 g dried cranberries

Method

  1. Put all the dough ingredients into the breadpan (Panasonic salt first, then flour, sugar, yeast, milk, and butter in that order; Lakeland milk, butter, and salt first, then flour, sugar, and yeast in that order).

  2. If your breadmaker has a fruit and nut dispenser that operates during kneading, put the raisins, apricots, hazelnuts, and cranberries into it; otherwise add them to the pan with everything else (it’s harder to add them after dough is made).

  3. Set to basic white dough, press the button and wait for it to make the dough, approximately 2 and a bit hours depending on your machine (Panasonic: 2½ hours, Lakeland: 1½ hrs).

  4. Grease a small, long bread pan.

  5. Take out the dough and knock it back by scooping up the top half and flattening it, then turn it all over over and repeat; then fold sides to middle to make a crease. It will be very sticky so you’ll probably need floured hands as well as a floured board.

  6. Shape to a fat sausage, making sure it is an even thickness: don’t let it get thinner at the ends.

  7. Leave to prove again in a warm place, about 1½ hours.

  8. Bake for 30 mins.

I have added more fruit (the cranberries) and increased the milk from 125ml to 200ml. Laura used no nuts; the one from Roscoff did. It’s a little bit too dense, but a reasonable approximation. It cuts nicely, and the crust isn't too hard.

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