Kouign-amann: the croissant’s big brother
This pastry from Brittany has a lot in common with its Parisian brother: the croissant. So what makes kouign-amann so different? It contains twice as much butter and sugar. It’s not called the fattiest pastry in the world for nothing.
Kouign-amann is pronounced kween yah-mohn. Don’t forget to put on an exaggerated French accent. It is a regional specialty from Brittany and consists of dough laminated in salted butter and then rolled in sugar.
Laminated
By laminating, you create a layered dough, much like puff pastry, really. You roll out the dough, spread the butter over it, fold the dough and roll it out again. You repeat this several times, creating increasingly thinner layers of butter. That’s what makes kouign-amann just as crispy as a croissant. The outside, on the other hand, is deliciously caramelized.
Twice as much butter and sugar
No one knows exactly how this pastry came about. The story goes that a pastry chef tried to save failed dough by adding twice as much butter and sugar. The result was a thousand times better than what he had initially tried to make. At Le Guillou bakery in Locronan, five generations of pastry chefs have perfected this pastry. With this recipe, you can make it yourself, for a change from that croissant.
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