The Best Use of Butter: Kouign Amann Pastries
Note: Over the weekend I visited Montreal and thanks to Montreal food blogger Katerine, forgot what it felt like to be hungry. Stay tuned this week for my snapshots from Montreal.
[Photographs: Erin Zimmer]
Calling a pastry "buttery" seems a little redundant, but the Kouign Amann, is like a croissant multiplied by a stick of butter. Originally from the French region of Bretagne (where it actually translates as "butter cake"), it has that delicate layer thing happening inside kind of like babka, topped with a golden crackly sugar shell.
At Patisserie Kouign Amann in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal, they make warm batches of the namesake pastry all day long. The recipe sounds simple enough: a round of dough with gobs of buttery sugar water on top. But the lady at the register insisted that "people always seem to mess it up at home, which is why they come here."
I don't know what it was about this pastry—the ingredients aren't crazy complex—but I had to take another bite. And another. The pastry sheets inside stay moist while the outside crunch is like the tappable top part of creme brulee. After the jump, take a look at how it's made.
A crew of extremely focused-looking bakers in the back kitchen knead the fluffy, yeasty dough in big round pans.
Then they ladle up a glistening sugary butter juice and smother it on top.
They poke at it some more until it's full of doughy craters and into the oven it goes for about forty minutes. Once done, it gets sliced up like pie behind the glass case next to the quiche and "diet" croissants—not really, but anything seems light compared to this.
Click here for a recipe from David Lebovitz but be forewarned by the patisserie lady, who basically insinuated that unless you're a hunched-over grandma from Bretagne, then let somebody else do it.
Patisserie Kouign Amann
322 Avenue Du Mont-Royal Est, Montréal QC H2T, Canada (map)
514-845-8813
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7 Comments:
wow, didn't know how fatty they were! lol
there was a transient Kouign Amann fad in Japan- was that following the Belgian waffle fad? don't remember, too many food fads to go through in my life (and most of them completely die). most memorable fads were tiramisu and nata de coco.
hmw0029 at 6:47PM on 11/09/09
is it weird that i recognized one of the guys in the picture with a video i watched many years ago?
http://turnhere.travel/city/montreal/all/films/102.aspx
highlighting the plateau region of montreal, this kouign amann place is featured!!! (i think it's the same place at least)
flip55555 at 9:58PM on 11/09/09
I used to live three doors over from that place. I think Kouign Amann's croissant dough is responsible for at least 4% of my body mass.
SqueezeBottle at 11:27PM on 11/09/09
HOLYCRAPYES butter. I've only had a kouign amann once in my life, but it was a very very good high flaky buttery point in my life.
Robyn Lee at 1:13AM on 11/10/09
I need to make this.
dbcurrie at 1:44AM on 11/10/09
Erin, that slice of kouign amann looks incredible! Why don't the pictures in the recipes listed on Lebowitz's site possess the same kind of layering? They all look a little lumpy and dense.
Chichi Wang at 7:05AM on 11/10/09
You just enjoyed Montreal's sunday beat : start with brunch at 11 and follow with a slice of Kouign Amann at 4 !
Regie at 9:31AM on 11/10/09