You have to try this amazingly, delicious, easy, kouign amann recipe! You will absolutely love this recipe and it is worth the time and effort!
Here is the kouign amann recipe pastry that Dominique Ansel made famous here in America. Although this isn’t his recipe exactly it does come out amazing. This is basically the croissant dough from the bouchon bakery book with the addition of the Dominique’s technique for rolling out the croissant dough.
One of the differences between the two recipes is in Dominique’s recipe he uses bread flour instead of all purpose and I don’t think he makes a poolish for his as well. The bouchon bakery book doesn’t have a recipe for kouign-amann but it is basically the croissant dough rolled up with sugar and baked in a muffin pan. Dominique bakes his on a sheet pan with a ring mold. I used a large muffin pan to allow for maximum rising in the cooking process. Here is the kouign amann recipe I hope you enjoy it!
Kouign-Amann
Poolish
- 100 g flour
- 100 g warm water
- pinch yeast
- 3 stick good butter Kerrygold, president or plugra
Dough
- 500 g all purpose flour
- 75 g sugar
- 10 g yeast
- 200 g warm water
- 100 g butter at room temp
- 15 g salt
- 1-2 cup sugar (for coating)
For the Poolish
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Mix the flour and yeast in a bowl. Pour in the warm water and mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment for 12-15 hours.
For the Butter Block
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Take a 1 gallon zip lock bag and unwrap the 3 sticks of butter. Place them in the bag. Using a rolling pin, pound and roll the butter into a nice square/rectangular shape. Try to use the bottom half of the plastic bag. Make the thickness about 1/8 - 3/16 thick approximately 6 1/2 by 7 1/2 rectangle. Place in the refrigerator to keep cold
For the Laminated Dough
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Add warm water to the poolish to help release it from the bowl. Using a spatula or scraper pour the poolish and water into a stand mixer bowl. Combine the flour, sugar, and yeast in a bowl. Then pour the mixture into the stand mixer bowl. Add the butter and with a dough hook mix well until the dough is formed about 2 minutes. Then add the salt and continue to mix about 10-15 minutes.
For the Kouign-Amann
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Once the dough is made, place on the your countertop ( try to resist from dusting with flour your counter top or cutting board) Roll the dough out to a perfect rectangle that is the same height as the butter block. Take out your butter and remove from the plastic back by cutting with scissors down each side of the bag ( now it is key to have your butter cold, but I think it helps the dough by having it cold but not too cold) I took mine out a few minutes before I locked in the butter. Place the butter block in the middle of your rectangular dough.
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Fold the left side of the dough over the butter and then ends should come just the edge of the butter. Then fold the right side like a book over the left side so it should look like a folded book. You want to pinch the seams so that no butter can escape the dough. Then turn the dough 90 degrees and roll the dough again out into a rectangle. The fold the dough like a book again and place in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes until cold. -
Then repeat this process 2 more times. Once you have turned and chilled the dough 3 times this is when your dough is ready. Now you can make Kouign-Amanns from the whole batch of dough and it will roughly make 12-16 depending on how big you want to make them. I cut 1/3 of the dough and made just 4 decent sized Kouign-Amann from it. The rest I used for croissants which will be in a post coming soon. So once you have your dough turned 3 times take your dough (1/3 for me) and douse your cutting board with about a cup of sugar. Spread it all over your cutting board (think of it as your bench flour and us it heavily), if you are like Dominique here you can’t use enough sugar . Then roll the dough out into a nice square, flipping the dough over a few times insuring that both sides get plenty of sugar rolled into the outside. Once you have rolled a nice square dough cut it into 4 large squares. Then douse each square with more sugar. Then take the four corners and bring them to the center each time pushing down hard into the center making sure the corners don’t pop up. Sprinkle with sugar once more on the top of the kouign-amman. Then spray a large muffin pan with non stick spray. Place each kouign-amman inside one muffin slot until you have all of them in the muffin pan. Cover and allow to rise for 20-30 minutes. Preheat Oven to 365 degrees. Place the kouign-amman in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes and then rotate the pan. Cook for another 15 minutes and then rotate again ( they should be getting close to being done, cook until golden brown, mine took another 5 minutes or so because they were big) Once you take them out of the oven turn them out onto a parchment paper lined sheet pan and allow to cool up side down for 5 minutes. Once you have allow the outside caramel to cool and harden you are good to go on eating them. Serve and enjoy!
