I now make this raisin bread once every week.  Trust me, once you try this, you won’t want to buy it from the supermarket anymore.    Firstly, this tastes so good & doesn’t compare to store bought raisin bread.  Secondly, this bread costs about $1.50 per loaf to make, even less if you buy your bakers flour in bulk like me.   It’s also very easy to slice & freeze, as you will see from the photo’s I’ve included in this post.   This dough is a little sticky, so you will need to give your blades a good clean after, so I’ve included a few cleaning tips in the notes.

Ingredients:
100g sultanas, soaked in water (and/or raisins, craisins or other dried fruit)
300g water
1 sachet yeast or 2 tsp dried yeast
20g olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
500g bakers flour
60g brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice

Method:
1) Place sultanas into a bowl & cover with water, allow to soak for 5 minutes.
2) Zero scales & weigh 300g water into TM bowl. Add yeast & heat for 1 minute/37 degrees/speed 1.
3) In this order add flour, oil, salt, sugar & spices. Mix 6 seconds/speed 6. Then knead for 2 minutes.
4) Drain sultanas & add to dough in TM bowl. Knead for 1 minute.
5) Transfer dough onto Thermomat & work into a ball. Allow to prove in a warm place for 30 minutes or until double in size (see before & after proving photo’s below).

6) Pre heat oven to 200 degrees. Knock back the dough & place into a greased or lined loaf tin. Allow to prove in a warm place for a further 20 minutes.  See photo’s below how much the dough rises again in 20 minutes.

7) Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
8) Allow bread to cool thoroughly, before removing from the loaf tin & slicing.  I will often leave my bread to cool all day or overnight before slicing.  Bread can be frozen in a freezer bag & slices taken for toasting as desired.

Notes:

To clean the blade after making the dough, add some cold water to the bowl (enough to cover the blades) & a squirt of dishwashing liquid.  Please bowl back on your machine & turbo a few times.  This will release most of the dough.  You will find that you still need to remove the blade to give it a good clean though.  I use a baby’s bottle/teat brush for this.

You can substitute the brown sugar in this recipe with 60g of honey.  I prefer using the sugar, as the honey makes the dough even stickier & it can stick to the Thermomat & inside the bowl/blades.

To prove my dough, I simply place boiling water in my Thermoserver & sit my Thermomat on top.  The heat that comes through the lid is enough for proving.