A lot of my favorite and fanciest recipes have been introduced to me by my friend Beth. We have been baking together since high school and we did plenty of kitchen duty together when we lived in London. We have never lived in France, but I think it's safe to say that if we ever got the chance to go, it would be a food-tasting Tour de France. Yum! Luckily we don't have to go to France to eat Kouign Aman. The most difficult thing about these pastries is pronouncing and spelling their name. Wikipedia would have it "kouign amann"but Martha Stewart says "kouing-aman." They can't both be right . . . can they? Maybe it's one of those transliteration issues, but I didn't think Breton had different characters than French. Hmm.
Anyway, this is a recipe I wouldn't have tried without Beth to walk me through it. She came over and we laminated the dough together and then nearly killed all eleven of our children with smoke inhalation. The pastries themselves didn't burn, but butter in the dough drips down from the pan and smokes like crazy! I am not quite sure how to overcome this problem, but in subsequent tries I have at least covered the bottom of the oven with foil so it's not so hard to clean up! Maybe if I was using "tartlet rings" instead of plain old muffin tins it would be better.
The recipe is from Martha Stewart, and you know Martha; if an ingredient isn't "high-quality" you might as well throw it right in the trash. I've changed her "mineral water" and "fleur de sel" to regular-person ingredients in this post. Now we don't have to feel ashamed for the "poor quality" of our pantries!
The hands-on part of this recipe is the lamination of the dough: the folding and rolling and wrapping. But it's not hard at all, and if you have a morning free, it's a lovely way to spend it, with the anticipation of warm, crisp, buttery, flaky pastry at the end.
Kouign Aman
