French · Dessert
Kouign-Amann
'Butter cake' in Breton — bread dough laminated with salted butter and sugar that caramelises into amber armour; patisserie's most delicious accident
- Prep
- 60 min
- Cook
- 40 min
- Serves
- 8
Ingredients
- Strong flour — 300 g
- Water — 180 ml
- Fresh yeast — 8 g (or 4 g instant)
- Fine salt — 5 g
- Salted butter, cold, in a 15 cm square slab — 220 g
- Caster sugar — 220 g
- Salted butter (for the tin) — 20 g
Method
- Knead flour, water, yeast and salt 6 min to a smooth dough; prove 45 min; chill 30 min.
- Roll dough to 30 × 20 cm; encase the butter slab (envelope fold); roll gently to 40 × 20 cm.
- Letter-fold (single turn); chill 20 min. Repeat for a second turn.
- Third turn: scatter half the sugar over the dough before folding — it grinds into the layers.
- Fourth turn with the remaining sugar; chill 20 min. Work fast and cold; leaking butter is normal, panic is not.
- Roll to a 28 cm square; fold corners to the centre; press into a buttered, sugared 24 cm tin (or cut 8 squares for individual kouignettes, corners folded in).
- Prove 30 min; bake at 190 °C for 35–40 min until profoundly caramelised — dark amber, not golden.
- Turn out onto parchment within 2 min, before the caramel welds.