Christmas Eve Kouign Amann

Hello;

Since Kouign Amann is a recipe that has gotten some attention lately, thought I would document my Christmas-eve baking. I'll post to this thread while I work; it should be completely done around 10 p.m.

The recipe is the cover of Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Baking Bible.

King Arthur bread flour (390g)
Instant yeast (2 tsp)
Fine sea salt (I used fleur de sel, 1 3/4 tsp)
Cool water (1 cup)
Unsalted butter, melted and cooled (2 tbsp)
Unsalted butter, slightly cooled, around 60°F (8 oz)
Superfine sugar (1 cup)

First step, whisk the yeast and then the salt into the flour in the mixer workbowl, then add the melted butter and water. Using the dough hook, mix on low until the flour is moistened, and then keep mixing on low for 4 more minutes. The dough will come together, clean the bowl, and be silky smooth without being very sticky. Cover the workbowl and let rest in a warm area for 30 minutes.

While the dough is resting, take the unsalted butter (ideally a European style butter like Kerrygold or Plugra), wrap it loosely in cling wrap, and use your knuckles to shape it into a 5 inch square.

Next, take your dough and roll it into an eight inch square.



Then roll out the corners to make flaps.



Place the butter square diagonally in the center of the dough square, and stretch the flaps over it.



Finish completely wrapping the flaps to encase the butter, and pinch the seams shut. This is the dough packet.

Roll out the dough packet to a 7" x 13" rectangle, taking care to get all the way into the corners.



Give the dough an envelope fold, brushing off any excess flour as you go. This is the first turn.



Wrap the dough in a new piece of cling wrap, place it in a ziploc bag, and refrigerate it for 1 hour.

After the dough has rested in the refrigerator for an hour, roll it again to a 7" x 13" rectangle and give it another envelope fold. This is the second turn.



Rewrap and refrigerate for another hour.

The third turn is where the cup of superfine sugar gets incorporated. (This is the big innovation in RLB's recipe... when I tried a couple traditional KA recipes that added the sugar with the first turn, osmosis pulled too much water out of the dough and the sugar broke the lamination, leaving you a sticky mess to handle and a final baked good that was more like cake than a croissant.)

Sprinkle about half of the sugar on the countertop in about the shape of your dough, place the dough on it, then sprinkle the remaining sugar over it.



Roll out the dough again, using the bench scraper to scoop sugar back on top of the dough (as well as lifting up the dough to spread sugar under it). You want the dough to incorporate most of the sugar.



Once you have all but about 2 tablespoons of sugar incorporated, give the dough another envelope fold (scooping more sugar into the middle of the fold), wrap it once more, and put it in the freezer for 30 minutes, followed by the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

This is great.

I always want to love RLB's recipes but generally find them to fussy so I haven't attempted any.

Great stuff. I really appreciate that you're laying it all out like this. Just seeing the steps makes it look easy - surely easier than it really is. But still, it's very instructive to the point of being almost motivational.

Looking forward to reading the rest and, having eaten more than 1 of your masterpieces over the years, I know it's going to be a fantastic ending!

=R=

While the dough finishes resting after the third turn, prepare a silpat-lined cookie sheet with 8 crumpet rings on it, and spray their insides with cooking spray.



Sprinkle any remaining sugar, place the dough on it, and roll it out to an 8" x 16" rectangle. Then use a pizza cutter to cut it into eight 4x4 squares. (I should have measured it better, you can see there's a little size variation in the squares.)



I wasn't able to get pictures of shaping them (since both hands were wrist deep in sticky sugar), but here's what I did:

1) Take a piece of dough in your left hand, and fold two opposite corners in to the center with your right. Cup your left hand and push a finger firmly down in the middle to help seal the corners. Repeat with the other opposite corners.

2) Do the folding again with the four new corners made from the previous folds.

3) Place the folded pastry in the prepared rings, fold-side up. If there is any sugar left on the counter you can scrape it on top of the finished kouigns.



Cover the kouigns with cling wrap and let them rise in a warm place; you want them to increase in size by about 1.5x with the dough touching the sides of the rings (around 30-45 minutes). While they rise, preheat your oven to 400°F.

Thanks for the very nice feedback, Pairs4Life and Ronnie!

Once the dough has risen, place it in the oven (The recipe doesn't specify, I use the lowest rack) for 12 minutes. Rotate the pan 180° then continue for another 8-15 minutes (this batch took 14 minutes on the second time); you are aiming for golden brown with the edges deeply caramelized.



You can see that some of the butter and sugar leaks out the bottom. This makes it very important to get them out of the rings while they are still hot, because that stuff will set to rock-hard caramel when it cools. Use a spatula and a pair of tongs to transfer them to a lightly-oiled metal cooling rack and remove the crumpet rings.



We are planning to have these for breakfast... not sure they're going to make it that long!



Thanks for reading, and have a very happy holiday!

Thanks for this thread. Instead of visions of sugar plums, it's these that will be dancing in my head.

Gorgeous! I was all set to start them for Boxing Day and then I saw the dreaded crumpet rings. I doubt I will have much success crowd-sourcing those or ring molds.

Where do you live, Pairs? We're in Rogers Park... we could loan you ours.

Wondering how many people just added "crumpet rings" to their after-Christmas shopping list

Thanks for the gift of the step-by-step and the gorgeous results --very inspiring!!

Merry Merry to everyone!

mamagotcha wrote:Where do you live, Pairs? We're in Rogers Park... we could loan you ours.

Yours are being used. I have ATK's Bread book and checked a couple of videos online and BA also used muffin tins. As soon as dinner is cleared, short ribs are simmering now, plum torte is done, and the rest got pulled from freezer so simply need to warm through, I am starting! Kouign Amann for Boxing Day!

Well, we did manage to restrain ourselves until breakfast. Popped them in the oven (set to 350°, but it hadn't fully heated up) for 5 minutes to warm them up, and then served.



The sugar forms a syrup that pools in the middle so the center is almost a custard, while the outside is crispy with caramelized sugar. Such a great holiday treat.

Dough is in fridge overnight.

Baking tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration chouxfly.

Those are beautiful Chouxfly!

Having won Chouxfly's Kouign Amann at the LTH holiday dinner, I can attest they are fantastic. Thanks for the step-by-step.

I did it!

Second batch already started.

Thanks Chouxfly!

PS I used the ATK recipe in Bread Illustrated. It is the only recipe I have seen with milk. Alas no explanation as to why.

They look great, pairs4life! How did the bottoms turn out?

For some reason it won't let me attach image from device. I did that I thought for the other image.

They turned out well!

https://instagram.com/p/BOfhhu1Fpjs/

Good to hear... I asked about the bottom because in my first attempts done as a single pastry in a 9" cake pan (one of which was David Liebovitz's recipe) the stuff leaking out the bottom had nowhere to go, so the bottom of the pastry was pretty much braised in a butter syrup. Looks like that's not a problem with muffin cups though!

Well thanks guys now this back on my list to make again. I have done the Lebovitz recipe, no good IMO. If nothing else, individual pastries have more surface area for browning which is really the genius of a KA.

I have also made the recipe in Flour, Too and filled it with some toffee apple filling.

I have to say all the recipes looks pretty much identical in ratio. Bread Illustrated recipe uses milk instead of water and Chang uses a bit more sugar than Beranbaum or BI. I have seen Dominique Ansel's recipe as well and he manages to cram even more butter in.

Anyways your pastries look awesome and there really is no better way to enjoy a KA than fresh out of the oven.

Speaking of which, any thoughts on how to store these to "bake to order"? My wife and I cannot eat a muffin tin ourselves in a reasonable amount of time.

botd wrote:Speaking of which, any thoughts on how to store these to "bake to order"? My wife and I cannot eat a muffin tin ourselves in a reasonable amount of time.

Yeah,

In the past I have frozen croissants baked and unbaked and thought they were great. Willing to try this approach in next round of KA.

In the interim make your friends, colleagues, and neighbors happy and share the KA love.

Amazing. Thank you for taking the time to post such a thorough and detailed account of your KA method. As others noted you make it *almost* look easy, at least enough to warrant considering to try this myself sometime. I'll definitely be referring to this thread if/when I do.

Chouxfly wrote:Thanks for reading, and have a very happy holiday!

Spectacular! Thank you for sharing with us.

pairs4life wrote:In the interim make your friends, colleagues, and neighbors happy and share the KA love.

Look terrific Friend ~