Pastry nirvana French kouigns amann are flaky, buttery, sugary perfection
Are kouigns amann the best pastry ever?
Rose Levy Beranbaum thinks so, and she is perhaps the most respected baking expert in America. Nathaniel Reid, who is one of the most celebrated bakers in St. Louis, is fond of them, too.
“It’s one of our most requested items,” said Reid, a James Beard Foundation award semifinalist in 2019 and 2020 and owner of Nathaniel Reid Bakery in Kirkwood, Missouri. “There’s not anything not to like.”
Indeed. Kouigns amann are flaky, buttery, sugary and a little salty— and when you heat butter and sugar together, you get caramel. In short, they’re the perfect pastry.
Originally from Brittany, in France, kouigns amann are made from a yeasted, laminated dough. That means they have layers and layers of thin, buttery pastry folded on top of one another. Unlike puff pastry, they have yeast; so the layers rise and take on a more complex flavor. In that respect, they are similar to croissants, Reid said, but they are sweeter.
Kouign amann is variously said to be ka-WEENa-mahn and queen-yaMAHN. Eitherway, in the Breton language it means “butter cake.”
In her seminal cookbook “The Baking Bible,” Beranbaum writes that her first couple of attempts at creating kouigns amannwere disasters. Only when she refined her method on her third try did she reach pastry nirvana.
I decided to try her version which— let the baker beware— takes six hours to make (much of it is spent allowing the dough to rise).
Beranbaum has a reputation for being precise. Her theory is that if you follow her instructions to the letter, you will end upwith perfect baked goods.
If she says to use butter with a high amount of butterfat, then use it (85%, if you can find it— the label will say it has 110 calories per serving). It’s easier to work with when you are laminating dough— folding it with butter so it develops alternating layers of dough and butter.
And if she says to use bread flour because its higher protein level keeps the butter layers from breaking through the dough, then go ahead and use it if you have it. Frankly, Imade it twice; once with bread flour and once with all-purpose flour, and the bread flour versionwas only marginally better.
And that might have been because itwas the second time Imade it, and I was getting better at the technique.
Both times, the results were simply magnificent. Lightly caramelized on the bottom, flaky on the top and sides, and soft and sweet in the middle, the kouigns amannwere as good as a pastry can get.