This week’s recipe is one that is very special to me. This is arguably not a dessert, though I think the amount of sugar and butter involved in its making justifies its inclusion in this blog. Rather, it fits under the broad category of French pastries called “viennoiserie,” breakfast pastries. It also happens to be a hybrid of two of my favorite pastries and, for that matter, foods: a Kouign-amann and an almond croissant. I’m not including a history section on this post because I’d rather tell you a little story about why this recipe is so important to me.
When I was younger, I was a student at a school in a small city in Connecticut. This school was unusual for many reasons, but the one that matters here is that I was permitted from a young age to leave campus and explore the city during school hours. I, a 12-year-old with ambitions of independence, would often go walking in the afternoon, and sometimes I’d stop at one of my favorite places in the city: a small café owned by a classically trained pastry chef and staffed by a number of other friendly folks. On days with nothing else urgent to attend to, I would go for a walk in the park and stop at the café on my way back, grabbing a drink and a pastry while chatting with the employees. The pastries on offer would rotate every day of the week. One Wednesday, the owner asked me if I had ever tried the pastry in the center of the case, a fairly nondescript golden brown object with no discernible label. They were his favorite, he said. Feeling adventurous, I agreed to try one, and I did not regret it. It was, honestly, one of the best things I had ever eaten. He informed me that it was a Kouign-amann, a pastry from Brittany similar to a croissant with a lot more sugar. Nobody I knew had ever heard of them, and I could not find them anywhere else but this one café. Lacking a ticket to France, I proceeded to visit the café every Wednesday, knowing they would be waiting for me.
A couple of years later, the chef of the café retired, and the café retired with him. At the time, Kouign-amann were obscure enough that I would be unable to find one again for several years. Years later I was in college and I was bored. Desiring a challenge, I decided to teach myself to make Kouign-amann. My first attempt ended up taking three days of concentrated effort, but I found the act of meticulously folding the dough with butter and sugar deeply meditative. When they finally emerged from the oven, they were beautiful, deeply golden and covered in crystalline sugar, and they tasted exactly like I remembered. I felt so accomplished, having put so much work into something and having it work out perfectly. Such a simple set of ingredients (just flour, water, butter, sugar, salt, and yeast) were able, through time and care, to transport me to another time, another place. Kouign-amann are emblematic of everything that made me fall in love with pastry: the way that simple ingredients can be transformed through pure skill and dedication into something that can make a person feel loved, cared for, transported, nourished. There’s something so magical to me about putting so much of yourself into a food that, nutritionally, is unnecessary. A Kouign-amann is a symbol of excess, but pastries and desserts aren’t about surviving. They’re about thriving, about sharing love and creating something amazing out of just a few ingredients and your own two hands. These pastries are a project, for sure, but they’re a labor of love. If you follow the instructions below, which I’ve designed to be as accessible as possible, then I promise you that you will have something worth living for.
Note: I want to give special thanks to the recipe developers and food writers whose words taught me to make Kouign-amann and countless other delicious things. To Claire Saffitz, whose recipe introduced me to the technique, to Rose Levy Beranbaum, whose detailed, foolproof recipes are a constant inspiration, and to Melissa Weller, whose recipe this one is modeled after.
Another, more annoying note: I’ve chosen to only include weights for some of these ingredients. I’m aware that most people in the United States bake with cup measures, but if you’re serious enough about baking to attempt a recipe like this, please buy a kitchen scale. The $10 investment will save you the heartache of a batch of pastries you spent two days on being ruined because you scooped too much flour into your measuring cup. I don’t want that to happen to you, so I’m not even giving you the option. Call me cruel all you want, it’s for your own good! Also, absolutely do not substitute regular American-style butter for the laminating butter in the recipe. American-style butter has less fat and is less pliable, so it’s likely to break into shards while you roll your dough and completely ruin your lamination. Just suck it up and spend the $8 on the European stuff.
The Recipe: Almond Kouign-amann
Ingredients:
For the dough:
450g bread flour
9g (2 teaspoons) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons of Morton Kosher salt or 4 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal
1 ½ teaspoons of instant yeast, SAF Red if you can get it
279g slightly warm water (about 100°F)
14g (1 tablespoon) unsalted butter, softened
For the butter block:
350g (25 tablespoons) unsalted, European-Style butter, such as Kerrygold or Plugrá, cool but spreadable
For the frangipane:
56g (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
50g (¼ cup) granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
¼ teaspoon almond extract
56g (6 tablespoons) almond flour
For assembly:
150g (¾ cup) granulated sugar
28g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
Begin by combining all the dough ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl if mixing by hand.) Attach the dough hook and mix on medium-low speed until the dough comes together into a shaggy mass. Increase the speed to medium and continue to knead for about 5 minutes, or until the dough appears homogeneous and relatively smooth. If you choose to do this by hand, it may take up to 10 minutes. Place a large sheet of plastic wrap on your work surface and scrape the dough onto it, patting the dough into a rough square. Use the plastic to pull against the edges, straightening the sides and corners of the dough until it’s got nice, even edges. The exact size of your dough square doesn’t really matter, but make sure it has sharp, clean edges and corners, which will make rolling it much easier. Wrap the dough in the plastic and refrigerate for at least one hour, but no more than two.
While the dough chills, make the butter packet. On a large piece of parchment paper, use a ruler and a Sharpie or pencil to mark a 7-inch square in the center. Turn the paper over so that the marker lines are on the bottom but are still visible, then fold the paper along the lines and crease it, so that you have a central square surrounded by four flaps. Spread the butter into an even layer that fills the bounds of the square. Fold the paper over the butter, once again pulling at the edges to maintain their clean lines. Enclose the butter in the paper, flip the packet over so that the folded side is facing down, and gently roll over the butter with a rolling pin so that it fills out the square in a perfectly flat layer. You should have a nice, neat, 7-inch square of butter. Place the packet in the fridge until cold, at least an hour.
Once the dough and butter block are both chilled, remove the butter packet from the fridge and set it on your counter for about 5 minutes, until the butter is soft enough to bend without breaking but is still cold. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and pat or roll into an 8-inch square. Unwrap the butter and flip it onto the dough so that the corners of the butter meet the edges of the dough. It will look like a diamond of butter set on top of a larger square of dough. When the butter is in place, peel back the parchment paper on it and discard. Take the four exposed triangular flaps of dough surrounding the butter and fold them over the butter block so that they meet in the center. Pinch along their seams to seal so that the butter is completely covered in dough on all sides. Make sure to pinch the seams very thoroughly so that no butter leaks out during the folding process.
If your butter is still fairly cold, proceed with your first fold. If it has warmed up, place in the freezer for 10 minutes before proceeding. To fold, place the dough in front of you on a lightly floured work surface and use a rolling pin to beat along the length of the dough, pressing the layers of dough and butter together. You want firm but gentle downward pressure here, not aggressive whacking. Once you’ve beaten the full length of the dough, gently roll over the ridges you’ve created to smooth them out and lengthen the dough. Try to push outward rather than downward, as you don’t want to squish the butter too much. Continue rolling until the dough is about 18 inches long (the width doesn’t really matter.) Use a sharp knife or wheel cutter to trim the last half-inch or so off of both short sides so that the edges are nice and clean. These trimmings can be saved or discarded. Now it’s folding time! Position the dough with a short edge facing you and visualize dividing the dough in thirds. Fold the section furthest from you over the middle section, then fold the section closest to you up and over that, as if folding a letter. Congratulations, you just made your first fold! Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and allow it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Take the dough out of the fridge, place it so that the closed edge is on your left or right (like a book) and repeat the folding process two more times: beat, roll to 18 inches, trim, fold like a letter. After the second fold, if the dough still seems relatively cold and firm, you can proceed with the third fold immediately. If it feels at all greasy or sticky, refrigerate for another 30 minutes. Once the three total folds are complete, wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, or overnight.
Once the dough is chilled, remove it from the refrigerator and perform the final fold. This time, have 150g (¾ cup) of sugar in a bowl. Dust your whole work surface with sugar and place the dough on it, again with a closed side facing your left or right. Dust the dough with sugar (yes, this is messy) and beat, roll, and trim it once more. Before folding, dust the entire surface of the dough with the sugar, then give it one last letter fold. Wrap in plastic again and set it in the fridge while you prepare your pans and make the frangipane.
To prepare the pans, generously spread the butter into each of the wells of two 6-cup jumbo muffin pans. Once the cavities are buttered, sprinkle a bit of your laminating sugar into each cup and rotate the pans until the cups are fully coated in butter and sugar. Set aside.
To make the frangipane, combine the sugar and butter in a medium bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add the egg and almond extract and continue to mix until smooth. Finally, add in the almond flour and mix vigorously until thick and smooth. Set aside.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it sit on your counter for a few minutes so that it softens a bit. Beat the dough all over as before, then roll it out to a rectangle measuring 12 inches by 16 inches. Trim off just a tiny bit from each side to straighten the edges, then cut the rectangle into 12 4-inch squares.
Scrape the frangipane into a pastry bag or gallon-size Ziploc and cut a ¾ inch opening in the tip. Pipe about a tablespoon of filling onto the center of each square of dough. If you’d rather not pipe, you can just scoop it with a spoon, but try to be neat about it. Now, fold each corner of the squares over the center of the filling and press down firmly in the middle, creating a little parcel of dough with almond frangipane inside. Once all the pastries are filled and shaped, transfer them to the cups of the buttered and sugared pan and cover with damp towels, setting them in a warm place. Allow to proof for about an hour, or until they’ve begun to visibly puff and you can see the layers start to separate. They may start to come undone in the center where you pressed them closed, which is just fine. About halfway through proofing, set a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat to 375°F.
When the pastries are puffed and the oven is preheated, transfer the pans to the oven and bake until the pastries are golden brown and the almond filling appears set, 25 to 30 minutes. While they bake, lay a sheet of parchment on your work surface. Once the pastries look done, take the pans out of the oven and immediately (I mean IMMEDIATELY) flip the pans over the parchment to remove the Kouign-amann from the pans. Use a fork or offset spatula to scrape out any pastries that don’t fall out of the pan. This bit is a little scary, but if you allow them to cool at all before taking them out of the pan, they will be impossible to remove. Oh, the joys of caramel. Once they’re all out, set them on a wire rack to cool before devouring. The pastries will keep, stored airtight at room temperature, for 2 days.
Resources:
Beranbaum, Rose Levy, and Ben Fink. The Baking Bible. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Saffitz, Claire. Dessert Person: Recipes and Guidance for Baking with Confidence. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2020.
Weller, Melissa, Carolynn Carreño, and Johnny Miller. A Good Bake: The Art and Science of Making Perfect Pastries, Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and Breads at Home. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.
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