Kouign Amann - A Traditional Buttery Dessert of Breton
In Brittany, cakes and biscuits are known for their star ingredient, butter and ranking right up the top of Breton favourites is the Kouign Amann. Invented in Douarnenez around 1865 according to Bretagne Tourisme, this speciality cake is made with a few simple ingredients and is essentially a bread dough to which you add sugar and salted butter, and then fold repeatedly like making puff pastry. The quality of the salted butter and the resting time of the dough are both essential to the success of baking this cake. During baking, the butter-sugar mixture melts, and gives the cake a crusty caramelised outside and a soft layered inside.
This regional speciality that is sold in boulangeries all over Brittany, even has its own association, the Véritable kouigan amann de Douarnenez Association. The Association is made up of bakers and pastry chefs who promote the Kouign Amann.
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Breton Butter
Breton desserts are rich in butter, and the Kouign Amann is iconic for its large amount of butter. Butter has always been made in Brittany and there's a couple of reasons for this. Large herds on lush meadows has produced the required milk and the proximity of the salt producing areas in the Gulf of Morbihan and Guérande Peninsula, produced the salt needed to preserve the butter.
Also important was the privilege of not having to pay tax on the sale of salt within Brittany. This encouraged butter production and the region became a main producer because of it. Did you know the saying "butter money" originated because of this? As butter was often sold as a supplementary income, it became known as "butter money".
Kouign Amann Recipe
Ingredients
600g Flour
450g Butter (soften 250g of the butter, leave the rest in the refrigerator)
200g Sugar
250ml Warm water
10g Baker's yeast
Method
1. Knead 500g flour with the water and add 250g softened butter. Dilute the yeast in the warm water. Add the yeast and knead again by hand or in a food processor for at least 10 minutes.
2. Rest in the refrigerator overnight, covered with a damp cloth.
3. Mix 100g flour with 200g sugar and spread it out on the table so that it is added to the dough as it is rolled out. Roll out the bread dough into a cross shape. Cut 200g butter (the remaining chilled butter) into strips and then arrange them in the middle of the dough, then fold the corners of the dough over the butter to enclose it like an envelope.
4. Roll out the square into a rectangle. Fold one third of the top towards the centre then one third of the base towards the centre. Repeat this action twice giving the dough a quarter-turn each time, then put the dough back into the refrigerator for twenty minutes to allow the butter to harden. Repeat the rolling and folding twice more. Preheat the oven to 180°.
5. Put the dough in a cake tin, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 25 minutes.
This recipe is for one large cake but if you want to make individual Kouign Amanns, as in the photos above, all you have to do is roll out the dough flat, then roll it up like a Swiss roll and cut it into slices. You then place the slices flat into muffin tins before baking.
Bring the buttery flavour of Breton desserts to your home by trying this Kouign Amann recipe.
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