🥐 Kouign-amann
Kouign-amann is a Breton pastry made from bread dough folded with layers of butter and sugar, then baked until the sugar caramelises into a shiny, crackling crust. Inside it is flaky and buttery, outside sticky and crisp. It is usually sold as a round cake or as individual pastries and eaten with coffee.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 300 g strong wheat flour
- 200 ml lukewarm water
- 5 g dried yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 200 g cold butter
- 150 g sugar, plus extra for the tin
Method
- Mix the flour, water, yeast and salt into a smooth dough and leave to rise for 1 hour.
- Roll the dough into a rectangle, place the flattened butter in the centre and fold the dough over it.
- Roll out and fold in three; chill for 20 minutes. Repeat twice, sprinkling sugar over the dough before the last two folds.
- Roll into a 1 cm sheet, cut into 8 squares, fold the corners to the centre and place in sugared muffin tins.
- Rise for 30 minutes, then bake at 200 °C for 25–30 minutes until deeply caramelised; release from the tin while warm.
How to make it lighter
- It is very rich: make smaller pastries or share one.
- Treat it as an occasional dessert with plain coffee or tea rather than a sweet drink.
- Bake individual ones and freeze them so you are not tempted to eat a whole cake.
History
The pastry is usually credited to a baker in Douarnenez, Brittany, in the 1860s, and the name means butter cake in Breton. It remained a regional speciality for a long time before bakeries far beyond Brittany began making individual versions.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →