Monday, December 1, 2014

BB: Kouigns Amann

Kouigns AmannBaked 11/23/14

Finally, an assigned recipe. :)

I'd never heard of this pastry before: it's a puff pastry relative with fewer turns and sugar incorporated into the last turn to make it sweet and add crunch. Years ago I made puff pastry (croissants) just to say I'd done it once, but I've forgotten any techniques I might have gained then. This was essentially a new effort for me. TL;DR: I was not so successful at it.

Kouigns AmannMaking the dough was straightforward. I thought the shaping of the butter block from my high-butterfat content (Organic Valley European Style Cultured Butter) was as well, but in retrospect perhaps I should have thoroughly kneaded the butter then re-chilled it if necessary to get it to temp. I did a pretty minimal kneading mostly to get the right sized block, then checked the temperature to be sure I was in range. Alas, in the second turn I could see that my butter wasn't in a smooth layer, but was in little shingles under the dough. The obvious issue was the butter and dough not rolling out together, but exactly what I did wrong is less clear--maybe the temperature of one component was off (I checked the butter but not the dough), maybe the butter needed kneading to gain plasticity, maybe my rolling technique needs work.


Kouigns AmannI didn't see a way to fix the shingled butter at that point in the process, so I went ahead with cutting and shaping the pastries, let them rise in English muffin rings, and baked them. I got a pool of butter on the baking sheet which is probably in part due to blobs of butter melting out of the pastries. It was actually only about 2-3 tablespoons, but I suspect if the dough had layered properly there would have been less.


We tried one of these warm from the oven as Rose suggested, and even though it wasn't as well layered as I'd have liked, the flavor was good. The sugar-limiting folks next door found it on the edge of too sweet, and thought the 1/5 of a kouign amann we each got from the sample was plenty. The rest were frozen and brought out for Thanksgiving breakfast, where older brother's family (much less sugar-averse) thought they were wonderful.

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14 comments:

  1. hi Nancy I'm one of the girls that's going to be baking along with the other regular girls and your post is very nice and your pastry looks really nice too.

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  2. they look perfect, even if you had butter problems.

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  3. Looks wonderful..cannot tell you had butter problems!

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  4. No one would ever know you had a bit of a problem. Totally delicious

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  5. Nancy, they look wonderful!! Isn't this fun?

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  6. I keep imagining an awful dairy-borne disease called Butter Shingles. Maybe you'd get it from from leftover cowpox antibodies. (shudder) Luckily your issue sounds much less serious and more delicious.

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  7. Your KA turned out wonderful! We really loved them. Hope you'll stop by and see my blog post. Take care.

    Patricia @ ButterYum
    http://www.butteryum.org/roses-alpha-bakers/2014/11/6/tbb-kouigns-amann-queen-ya-mahn

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  8. I know what you mean, Nancy--I've been chomping at the bit to get started too, and it was my trip to South American (that I selfishly insisted on taking) that made our start date late! Either your photo hid the flaws extremely well, or you have no flaws--they look wonderful.

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  9. What flaw? I think the more rustic they are the better they look... plus at the root of it, its all about how they taste. A tip, If you make them again.. mix a bit of salt with the sugar on top before baking.. this way it cuts down on the "sweetness".

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  10. They look pretty good to me. And haven't you been busy!! Baking and blogging is very very impressive.

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  11. Hi Nancy, they look absolutely delicious. Thank goodness for sugar lovers...

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