Kouign-amann
The name is Breton for "butter cake", and that is an honest description: 350 g of flour carries 270 g of butter and 200 g of sugar. The key difference from a croissant is that the sugar goes between the layers during folding. In the oven it melts out of the dough, runs to the base of the tin and caramelises there into a glassy, dark crust.
Your own work in that: 2 h 30 min.
- Base dough 20 min
- Rising 90 min
- Folding with sugar 150 min
- Shaping 20 min
- Proving 70 min
- Baking 40 min
- Turning out 5 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneKnead a plain yeast dough
Mix the flour, water, yeast, salt and the 20 g of butter and knead for 8 minutes. This is ordinary bread dough — all the richness arrives with lamination. Leave for 60 minutes until clearly risen, then flatten into a rectangle, wrap in film and chill for 30 minutes — for laminating, the dough must be as cold as the butter.
Ingredients: 350 g strong bread flour · 210 ml water · 5 g dried yeast · 7 g salt · 20 g butter
Beat the butter into a flat square
Put the cold butter between sheets of paper and beat it into a 15×15 cm square. It should be cold but pliable — hard butter that snaps will tear the layers. Salted butter is not accidental here — the salt balances the sweetness of the two hundred grams of sugar about to go into the dough.
Ingredients: 250 g butter
Enclose the butter and make the first fold
Roll the dough into a square of about 22×22 cm, set the butter on it turned 45°, fold the corners of the dough over it like an envelope and roll into a rectangle of about 20×50 cm. Fold in three like a letter and chill 45 minutes. This first fold has no sugar in it yet.
Ingredients: 350 g strong bread flour · 210 ml water · 5 g dried yeast · 7 g salt · 20 g butter
Second and third folds carry the sugar
Roll out, scatter a third of the sugar generously across the whole surface and fold in three. Chill 45 minutes, repeat the fold with the second third of the sugar and chill another 45 minutes. The sugar will crunch and partly escape — that is normal, sweep it off the worktop and put it back.
Ingredients: 200 g sugar · 1 tsp sea salt · 30 g butter
A thick, even layer of sugar across the whole surface.Roll out, cut squares and fold the corners
Roll into a rectangle of about 30×40 cm (about 7 mm thick), scatter the remaining sugar and sea salt and cut into 12 squares of 10×10 cm. Fold all four corners of each square into the centre and press. Set into a buttered muffin tin, seam upwards.
Ingredients: 200 g sugar · 1 tsp sea salt · 30 g butter
Four corners to the centre, seam on top.Prove 70 minutes at room temperature
Leave for 70 minutes, until visibly puffed and filling the moulds. Do not warm the proving spot — above 26°C the butter runs out of the layers and the whole lamination is wasted.
Ingredients: 350 g strong bread flour · 210 ml water · 5 g dried yeast · 7 g salt · 20 g butter
Bake 40 minutes at 200°C
Bake 20 minutes at 200°C, then 20 minutes at 180°C. The sugar melts to the base and starts bubbling there — the pastry should be deep amber, not golden. A paler kouign-amann has no caramelised base, which is the entire reason for making it.
Ingredients: 200 g sugar · 1 tsp sea salt · 30 g butter
Turn out of the hot tin immediately
Lever them out within a minute of leaving the oven, setting them upside down on paper. Caramel cooling in the tin sets to glass, and after five minutes the pastries cannot be freed without breaking them.
Ingredients: 200 g sugar · 1 tsp sea salt · 30 g butter
Out at once — the caramel sets within five minutes.
Before you start
Granulated sugar, never icing
The crystals have to survive the folding intact and melt only in the oven. Icing sugar dissolves into the dough straight away, and instead of caramel at the base you simply get sweet pastry.
A muffin tin is not a shortcut
The traditional Breton kouign-amann is one large round cake cut into wedges. Muffin moulds give every pastry its own caramel base and are easier in a home oven than one thick cake.
Eat on the day
Kouign-amann peaks in its first two hours, while the caramel still crunches. By the next day it softens from the moisture in the dough — refresh it for 5 minutes at 180°C and the caramel comes back.
