Is there anything more fabulous than something created through the wonder and miracle of caramelization?
Is there no means and ends that one won't go to to experience that sigh with relief when one triumphantly pulls this perfectly-caramelized melange of butter, sugar, and salt out of their oven?
I think not.
Those wacky butter-lovin' Bretons invented this unique gâteau for delivering the maximum dose of caramel: an all-encompassing dessert, which does double-duty at tea time. And I've been obsessed with figuring out how to make a perfect Kouign Amann, one of my favorite caramelized things in the world.
And here are my results.
I searched long-and-wide for Kouign Amann recipes, which are rare...either they're really sketchy, assuming that no one will actually dare to make it, or they didn't work at all and I was left with a wet, buttery mess.
This week, I pulled disk-after-caramelized-disk out of my oven in a obsessive attempt to master this dessert that I love so much. This was also much to the delight of friends and neighbors, who never thought they could get enough Kouign Amann. After all my tinkering, by now they have.
I also learned why it was so hard to find a good Kouign Amann, it's a bit of a challenge. So if you'd like to make a Kouign Amann, here's a few tips I learned that will help you out before you get going...
- Use the best salted butter you can find.
If it's unlikely for you to get Breton salted butter, use whichever good salted butter you can find and flick few grains of coarse crunchy salt before folding the dough in layers and across the top before baking. It's a pretty good approximation of the real thing.(And before the Butter Police out there chime in, there's actually only one stick of butter in the recipe, 1 tablespoon per serving.)
- This is a very sticky dough since it's rich with butter and sugar. You should have a metal pastry 'bench' scraper or a metal spatula handy to help with turning, as well as to keep the dough from sticking to the counter top.
- Work fast. Letting the dough sit on the counter and warm up is not a good idea. Roll quickly.
- Although I recommend waiting about 1 hour between rolling out the pastry layers, you can wait several hours (or overnight) for example, if you don't want to stick around.
- It is strictly forbidden to think about diets while your making a Kouign Amann.
Kouign AmannAbout 8 to 10 servings
1 tablespoon (12 g) dried yeast, not instant
¾ cup (175 ml) tepid water
2 cups (260 g) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 cup ( 200 g) sugar (which will be divided later)
(Plus additional sugar for rolling out the pastry)
1 stick salted butter (110 g), cut into ½-inch (2 cm) pieces and chilled2-3 tablespoons additional salted butter, melted
1. In a medium bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water with a pinch of sugar. Stir briefly, then let stand for 10 minutes until foamy.
2. Gradually stir the flour and salt. The dough should be soft, but not too sticky. Lightly dust your countertop with flour and transfer the dough onto it.Knead the dough with your hands until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 3 minutes. If the dough is very sticky, knead in just enough flour, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough doesn't stick to your hands.
3. Brush a medium bowl with melted butter, put the dough ball into the bowl. Cover, and let rest in a warm place for 1 hour.
4. Meanwhile, line a dinner plate with plastic wrap and set aside.
5.On a lightly floured countertop, roll the dough into a rectangle about 12" x 18" with the shorter sides to your left and right.The dough may be sticky and difficult to handle. Use a metal pastry scraper to coax the dough into shape, and a minimal sprinkling of flour, as necessary.
(It will all be beautiful later, trust me.)
Distribute the butter in the center of the dough and sprinkle with ¼ cup (50 gr) of sugar. Grab the left side of the dough, lift and fold it over the center, than do the same with the right side (like a letter). You should have what resembles a 3-level pastry.
6. Sprinkle the entire length of the dough with ¼ cup (50 gr) of sugar and (without rolling) fold again into thirds, as before.
Place on the plastic wrap-covered dinner plate and chill for 1 hour.(At this point, wipe excess flour from the countertop and dust the countertop with a rather liberal handful of sugar for rolling out the pastry again.)
7. Once chilled, remove dough from refrigerator.
Ease it away from the plastic onto the sugar-covered countertop.
(Use more sugar than shown. I was busy doing double-duty as the photographer and baker.)Top the dough with ¼ cup (50 gr) of sugar, press it in a bit with your hands, and roll into a rectangle for the last time.
Now wasn't it easier this time?Again, fold into thirds and let rest in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes.
8. Preheat oven to 425° F (220° C) and brush a 9-inch (23cm) pie plate, preferably non-stick, with melted butter.
9. Remove dough from refrigerator. Roll dough into a circle about the size of the baking pan. It will be sticky; dusting the top with a sprinkle of sugar will help.Once rolled, lift the dough and coax it into the pan. (It will want to break. If so, fold it in half and quickly slide something flat under it, like the metal bench scrape AND a metal spatula and quickly slip it into the pan. If it does break, just piece it back together in the pan.)
10. Sprinkle with the remaining ¼ cup (50 gr) of sugar and drizzle with 1 tablespoon melted butter.
Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is deeply caramelized. Let stand a few minutes, then run a spatula around the edges to release the Kouign Amann and slide the cake from the pan onto a cooling rack.
Kouign Amann Links
Since this is an unusual recipe, readers may appreciate a few links and photos from people who've made it successfully:
A reader in France shows off her Kouign Amman results. (She used a false-bottom pan, which leaked a bit.)
Another Kouign Amann, made using American ingredients.
French Letters shows-off a buttery example as well.
Wow -- thanks for the recipe and demonstration! I recently discovered Kouign Amann at a relatively new patisserie called Boule in LA. I can't wait to try yours.
I know what I am making this weekend!
I knew I dragged my french rolling pin from American for a worthwhile cause!
Mmmmm. I'm positively drooling. I'm practically pastry-phobic when it comes to making complicated desserts, so I'll probably have to make do with baking vicariously through your evocative photos.
Hmmmmm...caramelly kouign, caramel corn, caramel macarons...do I sense a trend?
Speaking of Laduree's caramel macarons, I tried them for the first time yesterday and I have only three words for you: Oh. My. God.
Very fun post!
Since I was given the option of tasting three of your wonderful Kouign Amann creations, (the 3rd baked/the first tasted, being the best) I consider myself very lucky.
Thank you so much :)
Of the other two, the darker one was liked by all in my home, a bit more than the lighter one.
Did you really call Katie Couric "honey"?!!!! Ahhh, that's great.
positively drooling, but i am sooooo bad at making pastries that i'll just do what brett is doing, basking in your glorious entry here... :)
If it`s as good as the caramelized pop corn...I'll try it despite the fear of buttering all my kitchen!!
Thanks for the explanation!
Making Kouign Amann is not for the easily-intimidated (which is why I took lots of photos!) but the result is, as you can see, worth it.
Alisa: My French friends actually prefered the first testers that I made before I reduced the sugar by 20%! They said the sweeter ones tasted more 'authentic'.
And yes, Taina....there is a trend here; maybe I should re-name the blog, CaramelKarma.com!
my recipe reads 250gm T45(strong) flour, 200gm(all inclusive) sugar and 150gm butter. the method is exactly the same as yours. because the sugary laminated yeast dough is much like making puff pastry, we did it over two days.
it goes well with caramelised granny smith slices, jus aux pommes, a quenelle of cinnamon/vanilla ice cream etc etc.
a similar dish from a different part of the world(without ODing on the sugar, if one doesnt wish to) is the egyptian fettir.
This is most definitely the WRONG thing to be reading at 12:41 in the morning. Oh my god I need some NOW. Quick note to self: Mever gonna happen, farmgirl. Stop blogging (and drooling) and go to bed already! : )
Thank you so much david. Since i tasted one kouign amann in brittany i've been desesparte to make some.
Love
Fanny
Hi David,
I recently made some kouign aman too!
I refuse categorically to make this. How come you're not fat? I refuse categorically to make this? I'm getting fat!
Judith:
There are special microscopic particles in the air in France. If you breath them in all day long, you can't get fat. It's amazing!
This is so going on my to-do list. Could you ship some of that french air over here? I think I am going to need it!
Hmm, doesn't look like too bad of a recipe... One stick of butter for two cups of flour. Not sure how to take the Court TV comment, since I work there.
THANK YOU FOR THE RECIPE!! I'm doing it for a French project.
Thanks for your recipe. As far as I know it's the best recipe for the kouign amann around here. I read some French blogs at first but didn't find a good recipe. It turns out your recipe is the most detailed (and does tell us that the dough is very sticky, something totally unmentionnend otherwise).
A friend and I tried this recipe yesterday with no success, it came out really hard, what did we do wrong?? I am really sad because I was hoping to make something special for Valentine's Day for my Breton husband...
hi EM: It should look like the one at the top of the page; flaky and buttery! Since I know it's tricky, that's why I provided step-by-step photos to help.
If it's too hard, perhaps it was cooked in a dark pan which conducted the heat too quickly.
Thank you for your reply David, I wasn't sure if you would even read this so I am happy you did! My friend is French, and great at baking (she makes her own pate feuilletee) so I was surprised when she had the same result that I did. I had had kouign amann before in France so I knew that it should have looked and tasted different than it did (by the way, my husband ate it anyway, except for the really dark parts, he couldn't stand to let the butter go to waste, a true Breton!). I had printed out the step by step instructions with the pictures and followed (at least I thought I followed) the instructions precisely. Maybe it was the pan... Should I try it in a clear glass pie plate this time? Oh, and my oven was on "convection" (which usually isn't a problem when I cook or bake, on the contrary) maybe that also had an effect?
I'm going to try this -- looks and sounds wonderful -- but how in the world do you pronounce it?
awesome guide. I just found out about Kouign Amann two days ago. My french coworker kept saying how delicious Kouign Amann was. I pretty sure I can't find any Kouign Amann around where I'm living, so I thought I try to make it..and came across your guide. Hopefully my Kouign Amann comes out right lol. Thanks for the guide with photos !!
FYI: in Breton, "kouign amann" literally means "butter cake".
When the dough has been rolled out and butter/sugar folded into it, and it is put in the refrigerator to chill on the plastic covered plate, should the dough also be covered in plastic to not dry out?
Chris: Since the dough is rather wet and sticky, it doesn't need to be wrapped with plastic. Plus a concerned reader took me to task recently for using plastic wrap, I thought in deference, I would use as little as possible.
Thanks for your reply,David. That's totally cool. When I wrote last night, I didn't mention that I was in the midst of my second attempt at Kouign Amann this weekend! The first was a total failure, producing an inedible, sugar encrusted disk. While it was indeed wet as a dough, it never was very sticky, so I thought maybe too much flour. The second Kouign Amann attempt, I carefully spooned and measured the flour, and the dough was the coveted (?) sticky consistency. I thought maybe covering the dough in plastic might have produced some condensation because it was actually wetter after being refrigerated, but I did anyway because I didn't have your answer yet. When I pulled the second dough out after the second chilling, it was sitting in a pool of sugary water, like a syrup! It turned out a little better, but still a bit too hard. Did it lose too much moisture to the pool of syrup? I am under the gun now, because I promised this to my French class tomorrow morning. I think I'll have time for two more prototypes. This time no covering in plastic. On a different subject, I heard you on Martha Stewart radio when you a guest several months ago, and thought you rocked! I proceeded to buy a couple of your books and am thinking about the Chocolate Tour! Then when I googled Kouign Amann recipes, I ended up here. Quel coincidence!
Because this is an unusual recipe, in spite of the step-by-step photos I included, some people have had a few issues making it while others had great success. I'm not sure why there are so many variants; all I can presume is that differences in flour & butter might be involved. I've included links at the end to some folks who've made it successfully, who included photos, to help readers. Bonne courage à tous! -dl
Aha! This is a Lardy Cake variation. I know it from Oxfordshire/Wiltshire, England, though there are no doubt further versions in other areas of the country.
I have a horrible feeling that just looking at your recipes is causing extra layers of fat to settle on me. Drat!
Sunny
I tried it for the first time today. Unfortunately, I haven't had the "real thing" yet so I don't know how it should look like. Does "flaky" mean it is like a croissant? Mine was more like a cake inside. It would be helpful if you could add a close-up photo of the baked cake cross-section.
I also experienced a pool of sugary syrup after leaving the dough in the fridge. Is that normal?
What about the convection oven? Any changes needed?
I also used a regular springform and got quite a lot of butter leaking. That definitely caused a change in the end result, so I will try with a deep pan next time.
Could a regular (fresh) yeast be used? What quantity?
In Step 7, I presume that the folding is again twice (left-right and top-bottom), right?
Matevz
My mum and I made this for my french project (as did so many others) and we greatly apprcated it. On my first try ( im not kidding) it turned out really good. Not extremely pretty but good enough and delicious. The pictures were my savior! Thank you so much, this will definatly be repeated in my house
What is the correct pronunciation for "Kouign Amann"??
Because the word is Breton, I'm not sure how they'd pronounce it. But in Paris, it's most commonly-spoken like KWEEN-yah-Mahn. -dl
I have it on its last chill right now. Kinda excited to see how it will turn out! If it does well, and even if it doesnt, Ill probably blog it tomorrow.
I am so delighted to have stumbled upon your blog for a cookie recipe and to my amazement, I have found your recipe for Breton butter cake. I was visiting the old town of Dinan on a vacation trip to Brittany last April with my husband and bought a few unforgettable pieces of this cake for a small corner bakery and in my rush, I forgot to write down the name of this delicacy. As we drove away from the town and tasted this pastry, I begged my husband to drive back so that we could buy more. When we got back to the States, I never forgot about it and was sad that I may never find it again. Seeing a photograph of this cake made me so happy. Now I know its name (I think).
Thanks for posting this recipe which I will attempt to make soon and share with my family and friends. I am now a big fan of your blog. Keep up the great work!
Also, what camera do you use for taking these fabulous food photos? I did take a photo of this pastry while in Dinan and would be happy to send you a copy just to see if you can confirm if it is the same cake. Do you know of any bakeries in the East Coast that make this cake? I haven't come across any bakeries that make this yet. Thanks.
Airline
You can read about my photo equipment and some background at the post My Food Photography Gear. -dl
I made this recipe almost to the letter-I used 1/2 water and 1/2 leftover whey from having squeezed out some yogurt earlier, because I guessed it would add a nice slightly sour/complex undertone to the dough, and I was right. This was my first time making it and it was extremely delicious. I did most of the steps in the evening on Sat., let the finished cake get a little head start to rise in the pan, then refrigerated it overnight to bake for Sun. morning. I recommend that folks watch it carefully in the oven because mine was VERY dark, just short of burned, at 35 minutes(I use an oven thermometer so I know it's accurate) Also, my hubs and I each ate half, so you might want to make more if you're feeding gluttons. I loved the crunchy caramelized exterior and fluffy, layered interior. Thanks for the precise instructions, David. I will surely consult your recipe to make this again.
*I wrote one thing wrong. My husband and I TOGETHER ate half, so one Kouign Amann would feed four, not two, very hungry folks like us.
I'm preparing to try this recipe in the next few days and I have one question for you, David, or any of you who have successfully made this butter cake. When you have placed the finished dough in the pan, do you bake it immediately, or let it rise first? I wondered if that might be the problem for people who said their cake came out hard and flat.
Thanks for this, and all your recipes, David. After being an avid home baker and cookbook reader for 30 years, and visiting France 8 times, it's a thrill to find a recipe I've never even heard of, much less tasted.
Cheryl
I've been drooling over these pictures for too long and decided to make this today. I didn't find it very hard to handle, it just stuck to the countertop once, but that was solved with a bit of flour and some gentle pulling. It was a little hard to roll it out with the cold chunks of butter in it too, and they kept falling out. And I skimped on the resting time in the fridge before finally rolling it out, but it turned out fine. I used a Pyrex pie dish and the dough wanted to break so badly that I cut it into more manageable quarters and pieced it back together in the pan. Slightly burnt around the edges and dripped caramel on the floor of my oven, but turned out so well it more than made up for it.
I just made these; I opted to make the individual ones. Wonderful, delicious, addictive with all the wonderful, caramel salty goodness! I learned a lesson as well. Don't use "dark" baking sheets, pans, etc...it will make the caramelization go too quickly and will burn. ( We ended up pulling the burnt layer off, and still ate the upper parts, yummy!) I will be making these again in an effort to perfect the end product. I really enjoyed making the dough. It was great fun and good to learn...oh, l love all those layers! Thanks!!!
I just made this for Father's Day. It was so wonderful! It took forever but I would do it again. I was going to share a slice with my roommate but I decided that if I gave her a slice, I would only have two left...so I gave her one bite. So selfish. But it was so good!!
Yep, I made the mistake of using a dark pan as well and it turned into failure. Even though it clearly states pie plate, I kept on thinking cake pan for some reason.
Another problem was that although I used a solid pan, a lot of the caramel spilled over the side into the oven, causing a lot of smoke. I had to open the oven a number of times to insert a cookie sheet to capture the spilling caramel as well as let the smoke out, and I know this messed things up as well.
Ah well, at least it isn't that expensive a recipe and I still have incentive to try and get it right. =)