Kouign-amann: Part one
/
Wowza! I can’t believe it will be 10 years this autumn since I launched this blog. In September of 2014 my very first published post was on Kouign-amann (literally translated as butter cake), that tasty caramelized traditional Breton pastry.
This 2-part post provides a fresh look at making three different versions of these treats. Part one - muffin-like with turned in corners (header photo) and spirals (below). Part 2 - full sized 9” cakes (not really cake at all, just layers of buttery goodness baked in a pan).
spirals all baked up
A bit of back story: during my pastry school days in 2006 I recall my fascination upon seeing Chef Xavier Cotte at Le Cordon Bleu Paris demonstrate the creation of this delicious buttery, caramel-y pastry (and my delight in tasting it!).
A few years later, in early 2011, as Steve and I were celebrating the New Year in Brittany with our British friends Richard and Pauline, we discovered one of Georges Larnicol’s shops where many flavors of petite kouignettes were on display. We picked up a few but were disappointed in their texture and flavor. It seems they were probably sitting in the case longer than they should have been. Even a brief warm up in the oven did little to revive them. Bummer.
When I opened my French Tarte pastry studio in Pawtucket RI in May of 2012, my focus was baking French classics like croissant, croissant aux amandes, pain au chocolat, financiers, tartes, profiteroles, sablês and more. It was a trip back to Paris a year later that brought me to Alain Ducasse’s Paris école de cuisine for a chocolate themed class. Our conversation turned to laminated dough and, when I learned that the class’s chef for the day, Geoffrey Franck, had just taught a Kouign-amann class, I asked for his recipe. Et voilà - he was kind enough to share it with me! I tweaked it just a bit and began baking these babies for my shop. Here’s the recipe I use.
Putting up the shingle
Kouign-amann
I moved out of the Pawtucket teaching and retail space in the spring of 2014 as Steve and I prepared to move back to Michigan. I was eager to stay active in the baking and pastry world and so began the blog. When I launched it in 2014, I had my sights set on working my way through the recipes in Philippe Conticini’s La Pâtisserie des Rêves, but, alas, I soon discovered a number of inconsistencies from recipe to recipe. I moved on to other baking adventures, many of which are chronicled in this very blog.
So here we are in 2024. Writing a new/updated post on the subject has been whirling around in my head for awhile now. I’ll review the steps, look at three ways to shape/bake K-amanns and offer some tips along the way based on things I’ve learned about the process.
Lots of stuff coming up so take your time or just browse as you wish.
I’ll start with individual pastries, either as spirals (kouignettes) or muffin-like with corners turned in. These are popular all over the USA and certainly in France and beyond. The 9” cake version (coming up in part 2) is a more traditional way to enjoy it by the slice when in Brittany. A quick web search confirmed that Georges Larnicol’s kouignettes remain popular, with many locations in Brittany as well as shops in Paris, Nancy and Bordeaux.
Individual kouign-amann, just shaped
As is true of most any recipe topic you review, you’ll find a multitude of variations in ingredient proportions, mixing/kneading times, rising and resting times, numbers and types of folds for laminated dough and on and on. You just gotta do it and make it your own.
Let’s start this thing! Don’t forget the recipe here. There you’ll see standard measures as well as gram weights (my preference).
Place 350 ml tepid water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add 50 g bread flour, 500 g all purpose flour, 50 g sugar, 20 g soft butter in pieces, 12 g salt, 5 g instant yeast. Give it a stir up with a spatula to get things moistened.
Using the dough hook, mix on stir for a minute then on speed 2 for three minutes (Kitchenaid settings) to achieve a soft dough.
Just after mixing
Cover the bowl and let it rest at room temperature for an hour. The dough should appear more pouf-y. It may look like a subtle change in the photos but rest assured the dough has risen and is softer and more lovely in texture after the hour repose.
Ball the dough up and wrap it in plastic wrap, giving yourself some leeway to allow you to push the dough out into an 8” rough square within the confines of the plastic wrap.
Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours or up to overnight. I usually make the dough in the late afternoon then fridge it and plan to finish things off the next morning.
You can prepare the butter block ahead and hold it in the fridge until ready.
For the block: weigh out the butter (in this case 400 g), lay it out on a piece of plastic wrap to form a 5-6” square of butter (cut chunks as needed), wrap it up, leaving some leeway around the edges to provide a 7-8” final size. Let it sit at room temp to soften then tap with a rolling pin and smush it around within the plastic to get rid of seams (you want the butter block pretty uniform).
ready for smushing and shaping
Keeping it in the plastic allows you to manipulate it without getting your hands all buttery. I roll and push it around to work at getting rid of seams.
Push, flatten and then unwrap to regroup.
Rewrap leaving room to roll the butter out to a square about 7-8-ish”. Then roll it out, all the while keeping it in the plastic. Chill until ready to use.
Bottom line - the best way to create a smooth butter block is soften your butter enough so that you can easily form it within your parchment or plastic wrap into a uniform block without seams. Then chill it until you’re ready to proceed with the beurrage and folds.
If you have access to solid pounds of butter (no sticks!), even better. During my stage at Pascal Pinaud’s pâtisserie in the 5th arr. we cut slabs of butter off very large blocks when making large batches of croissants. Then during my Providence/Pawtucket days I used Cabot full pounds, both when pastry chef-ing at Gracie’s and in my French Tarte business. It’s much easier to portion out what you need and have no seams! Yay!!
When ready for the beurrage, take the butter out of the fridge about 20 minutes ahead to allow it to warm enough to make it malleable yet cool. You want it to bend, not crack.
NICE!
There are at least a couple of ways to perform the beurrage (envelop the butter in the dough). Below is an image using felt templates - it’s a good way to show the participants in my classes how it can be done.
Either form the dough into a square with the butter centered at an angle or roll out a rectangle and center the butter on it.
Get it?
Then fold the corners of the square over the butter OR fold the ends of the rectangle over the butter. The end result is essentially the same. A dough/butter package!
Here’s what I did.
Dough and butter components
Roll the dough out to two times the length of the butter block. Keep the butter wrapped and set it in place to be sure you’re happy with the size/position before unwrapping it. Looks good.
Unwrap the butter and set in place.
Fold the bottom up . . . . .
. . . and the top down to cover the butter. Pinch all the seams closed.
Turn the dough over seam-side down with the pinched ends at top and bottom. Press down with your rolling pin along the length to get the elongation under way and “set” the package. Always rolling to and from yourself, roll the dough out to about three times length to width. We all roll with different pressure so I periodically flip the dough lengthwise (top becomes bottom and bottom becomes top) to keep the thickness of the dough as even as possible.
And remember to lift and fluff the dough, re-flouring lightly as needed to prevent sticking. If the dough becomes too warm and soft, wrap it and chill in the freezer for 10 minutes or fridge for 15-20 minutes to firm things up.
As you roll the dough out, pay attention to the edges. The butter won’t always get out to the very edge so it’s recommended that you trim those edges to expose the butter. This makes for more precise laminations. Create scrape buns with the extra dough.
Doughy edge
Here’s the cut edge showing the exposed butter.
Time to start the folds. Here are some choices: three 3-folds (letter folds) with flour then a final 3-fold rolling in sugar (my choice). Or two 3-folds with flour and two 3-folds with sugar. Or one 4-fold (book fold) and one 3-fold with flour and a final 3-fold with sugar. You can play around with it.
Here’s the start of the first 3-fold. Visualize the dough in thirds. Notice my scraps - you’ll see those later in a squiggle bun I made. Just as for the beurrage, bottom up . . . .
. . . . top down.
First three fold complete
After each fold rotate the dough 90 degrees so the spine of the book is on your left. If your kitchen is cool and your dough is behaving you can go right ahead with the second 3-fold. Otherwise chill the dough for 45-60 minutes before proceeding with the next fold.
No matter what fold approach I’ve chosen, I label the package with types of folds I’m planning, then cross off after each fold. That’s particularly helpful if doing several batches of dough - easier to keep track of it all.
After my second 3-fold I wrapped the dough, froze it for an hour or so to retard the fermentation then put it in the fridge overnight with plans to finish the process the next morning. That timing worked for me this time but it can all be done in a day too.
The next morning I completed my third 3-fold with flour then wrapped/chilled the dough while I prepped my pans.
I’m using 3” individual Fat Daddio cake pans for my muffin-like/corners-in version and a standard muffin tin for my spirals. Butter and sugar them. NOTE: I didn’t do the two center muffin wells at first, since I thought I’d get 10 spirals from my dough, but I prepped them after my yield was indeed a dozen.
When ready for your last fold, have 200 g granulated sugar on hand. Sprinkle sugar on your work surface, place the dough down, sprinkle more sugar on top then roll it out lengthwise
Ready for final 3-fold
At each step sprinkle more sugar on. Once again, bottom up and top down.
At this point lightly wrap the dough in parchment and let it rest for 20 minutes or so. The best tip I received on this was from the previously mentioned Chef Franck who cautioned a room temperature rest rather than a refrigerated rest. Sitting in the fridge gets the sugar melting and boy can it get messy!
OK. Now it’s time to roll the dough out for cutting and shaping. I needed a piece of dough about 7” x 10.5 inches to give me six 3.5” squares for my Fat Daddio pans. The rest went to spirals.
I rolled the dough lengthwise, keeping the width at 7-ish”. Using the lower half or so of the dough, I marked out and cut my squares.
Fold the corners of each square into the middle starting with two opposite corners and finishing with the other two. Push the center down firmly with your fingertip. Place each in the prepared pans.
Roll the remaining dough out to about 8” high and 12” wide and cut twelve 1”strips. Roll each one up into a spiral and place them in the prepared muffin tin.
Notice my squiggle bun sitting amidst the pans on the right below. I rolled the scraps in vanilla sugar and rather randomly braided and coiled them.
At the start of the rise.
Cover pans with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and give them a 60 minute rise.
AFter the rise
During the second half of the rise heat your oven to 375ºF.
Bake 20-25 minutes until golden brown and caramelized.
Taking great care not to burn yourself, turn out the baked buns onto a wire grid. Use an offset spatula to loosen the edges. If you wait too long, the caramel hardens and removal from the molds is difficult.
Notice below that some of the spirals aren’t as well baked as the others. I popped them back into the oven for 5-10 minutes to get them nicely browned.
Here’s the finished batch of both versions. Notice the scrap bun tucked in there.
After a short cool down (they’re deelish a bit warm!), Steve and I did a taste test. Yes!
Crisp exterior, caramel just right, light, airy yet buttery interior layers. We’ll take it!
Traditionally in Brittany you’ll see Kouign-amann served as a full 8-9” cake for breakfast or afternoon tea. Stay tuned for Part 2 - the full size version!
