The evening before:

1. If you need to grind your own caster sugar, add raw sugar (55g) to the bowl and grind Speed 9 / 3 seconds.
2. To the caster sugar (55g), add the full fat milk (130g), water (130g) and dry active yeast (3 tsp) to the bowl. Program 2 minutes / 37C / Speed 2.
3. Add the cubed unsalted butter (40g), wholemeal spelt flour (250g), white spelt flour (250g) and sea salt flakes (10g) to the bowl. Combine Speed 6 / 20 seconds. At the end the dough should be very rough and barely incorporated. As long as there is no flour residue, that is enough. You don’t want to knead it completely, otherwise it will not be easily workable later on.
4. Tip the dough into a glass bowl and cover with clingfilm. Chill overnight and leave to rise.

The next morning:

1. Remove the dough and the chilled unsalted butter (250g) from the fridge. Take your butter and flatten it with the rolling pin until you have a square that is about 12cm on each side.
2. Tip the dough onto a well floured surface and shape into a rough square.
3. Starting about 3cm from the edge of the dough, roll each edge out to make a flap. Start on the top edge and work your way around the dough to create four large flaps. Flatten the square that stays in the centre and place the butter on top.
4. Fold the bottom flap up to fully cover the butter. Then fold over the top flap; this should cover about 80 percent of the butter. Lastly, fold over the left and right flaps. Pat it down with your hands to flatten slightly. There should be a vertical seam in the centre.
5. To do your first fold, roll out the dough carefully, applying only gentle pressure, into a large rectangle about 60cm long and 20cm wide. Brush off any excess flour and fold it back together, by folding the bottom third up and the top third down, like an envelope.
6. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30-45 minutes. Fridge temperature will have an impact here. With a very cold fridge you may find that it is cold enough to continue after 10 minutes. The purpose is to let the dough relax a little and the butter to solidify again before making the next turn.
7. Then, place the dough onto a floured surface with the seam on the right side, and roll it out into a rectangle again by only applying gentle pressure. Spelt flour likes to be handled with care. You don’t want to squash the butter. Brush off excess flour and fold it into a envelope shape again.
8. Wrap and chill for another 30-45 minutes.
9. Repeat this once more so that you have done three folds in total. Wrap and chill overnight again or at least for 4 hours.

Baking day:

1. On the baking day, which should be Day 3 unless you are doing it in the evening of Day 2, unwrap the dough and place on a floured surface. Roll out to a rectangle about 0.5cm thick. Cut in a zig zag pattern to make 12 triangles.
2. Make a 2cm cut in each croissant base. Slowly start rolling up the croissant, pulling out the 2 corners to widen the croissant base. Then roll up from the base upwards.
3. Turn the edges inwards and place on baking trays lined with baking paper.
4. Brush each croissant with the beaten egg (1) very gently with a pastry brush, then cover with clingfilm and a tea towel.
5. Leave to rise until doubled in size. This may take between 1-4 hours. If you want the croissants for breakfast the next morning, you can proof them at room temperature for 1 hour and then chill overnight in the fridge for up to 16 hours. At this stage you can also freeze them. Leave them to defrost before continuing to use.
6. Preheat the oven to 200C or 180C fan forced.
7. Once the croissants have increased in size by about 50 percent again, put them in the oven, spraying the walls of the oven with some water as you are putting in the croissants.
8. Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden brown and puffed up.
9. Remove and leave to cool before slicing.
10. Enjoy!