Kouign Amann

Kouign Amann has been on our to-bake list for a long time, we struggled between following the traditional method or adding our own twist to it. A bakery should always have it’s style because every pastry has it’s original form and recipe, and depending on the work space and ingredients we have, most of the time, the original way doesn’t work out and we compromise to make it happen in order to recreate a product that we are happy and proud of.

So what is a Kouign Amann? It is described as an airy, sugary, fluffy, buttery pastry that’s light enough it makes you feel like you are sitting on clouds. The first bite is the crunchy outside that offers sweetness, then comes the soft buttery center that melts in your mouth. It all happens so fast that you just want to take another bite and enjoy the sensation over again. It is the perfect pastry to go with a cup of black coffee.

To make it right from the first bite, the moulds we choose will affect how the pastry will caramelize. Kouign Amann is traditionally baked in rings, so the bottom will get direct heat and evenly cook the sugar. Silicon moulds are easier to clean but it doesn’t offer the best result when it comes to caramelizing the bottom of the pastries. Sugar tends to drop to the bottom with the moisture that’s created by the dough resulting in more of a syrup instead of caramel. The picture to the right shows our initial batch where we took the idea from our spicy cheese knots. Instead of rolling our dough in spices and cheese, it was coated with butter and sugar. The top was uneven which caused some parts to over cook and burn and some was left soggy.

To keep the pastry leveled, we changed the way we rolled them into the moulds. We also tried putting another tray on top to keep it flat but the silicon moulds were too soft and the sugar started gushing out. In the following experiment, we decided to put them into a metal pan. Without the flexibility of silicon, we were hopeful the shape will hold it’s form.

We put a tray on top of the moulds during the first 2/3 period of the baking time to keep everything level. To finish baking off the top we took off the tray but the moisture still forced the center to rise.

Most pastries takes multiple tries before we think of ways to improve including ways to mass produce and shorten our time of production or changing the shape for storage purposes. This Kouign Amann definitely took more than several tries! After a few months of trial and error, we finally came to our end result which goes to show that sometimes you just have to keep trying!

We loved the corners that came from the last mould we used, and now the last thing we needed to solve was to create a fold that will keep the pastry leveled during the bake time. We’ve tried stacking rectangles together, we’ve tried stacking it side ways, but in the end we winded up using a long strip of dough and shaping it into the rectangular moulds. This became a Kouign Amann that we are so proud of and we also can’t stop eating it!