Kouign-Amann Recipe Made Easy (One of the Best European Pastries)

Hi Bold Bakers, today we are making the famous Queen Amman pastry. It is super delicious. The yeasted dough, we're going to laminate it. It's a lot of steps, but don't worry, it is well worth it. So I'm gonna start out the dough now. So here I have my stand mixer. So I'm gonna make this dough using bread flour because it has higher protein in it, which will develop more gluten. It will just be much better for this pastry. It makes it stronger and I think gives it more of a bite. So this pastry, for those of you who don't know it, translates as butter cake, which is just a pastry that is loaded with butter and with sugar and it's absolutely delicious. You've probably seen them all over the internet. People are just going crazy for them. In here I'm going to add a bit of sugar, salt, and some instant yeast. Now before I lose you, this is a recipe that does, you know, require a lot of steps. However, it's not incredibly hard. You just have to follow the steps. So to make these at home is such a real treat. And you know, it is a little bit of work, but believe me, it is well worth it. So I'm just gonna mix together my dry ingredients on my kitchen mixer and then into this I'm going to add in a little bit of room temperature butter. And just let that knead in on the machine. This just takes a minute or so and you'll know when it's in there when the mixture starts to resemble, it's kind of like, you know, big lumpy breadcrumbs. You know when the butter is in because it's kind of lumpy just like this. We're just rubbing it in just like the way you would if you were making a cobbler topping or a crisp. So next we're going to add in our liquid here. I have some lukewarm water, like I say, blood temperature water. If you put your finger in it, you can't feel the water around your finger. That means it's the same temperature as your blood, which is perfect for dough making and for activating yeast. You don't want it too hot or it'll kill your yeast. So just lukewarm. Add in your water. I like to do it slowly, just in case you don't knead it all. I've made this a few times now so I know that we do knead it all. And we just want that dough to come together and to form a ball. So once the dough starts to come together, we're going to knead it on medium speed for around five minutes just to develop that gluten. So I've had this recipe on biggerbolderbaking.com for some time now, but with no video. So it was such a popular recipe, but everyone's asking for a video. So just so you can follow the step by step process and like, you know, have the best results possible. Okay, lovely. This is good. Five minutes. Let's have a little look at what our dough should look like. What you're going for is a nice, you know, it might be a little bit sticky and that's okay. Just a nice, soft dough. Just like that. That cleans the bowl. Lovely. I don't know how many times over ten years I have said that, but it still rings true. Clean bowl, one ball of dough. Lovely. So now we have our dough. Here I have a bowl. I'm going to add in a little bit of oil to it. Just a flavorless oil. Coat your dough in the oil. This just helps us proof and makes life easy on us. Cover it with cling wrap or a shower cap. Cover it with a tea towel and then we're going to set this over to the side at room temperature for around an hour and a half. What we wanted to do is double in size. And then we're going to move on to our next step after that. So here's a dough that I have proofed and yours should look just like this. You know you're talking a minimum of an hour and a half, maybe two hours. It's lovely and puffy. Nice and soft. Beautiful. You know when it's proofed enough because you put your finger in there and it doesn't bounce back. Just like that. So here's what we're going to do. Knock out all of that air by pulling the sides into the center. You might think like, oh no, you're losing all that lovely air, but what we're doing is actually strengthening the dough. We're not weakening it and this helps it trap more air and makes it stronger. So you get more bubbles and you get like a stronger pastry, which is exactly what you want. There's our dough, air knocked out. Back on with our cling wrap, tea towel, and pop it into the fridge and let it chill for two hours. We want it to get nice and cold before we use it. So while our dough is chilling we're going to make our butter block. Now I don't want you to freak out when you hear the words butter block because trust me I used to absolutely cringe when I read a recipe that said a butter block because I thought to myself there's no way I'm doing this. But like I said I'm going to walk you through it and it's really easy. On a piece of parchment paper we are going to draw out a rectangle 12 inches by 6 inches. All of these measurements are in the written recipe on my website. And then just turn that page over so the ink that you used is on the other side. So now for our butter block. Here we have softened butter, look at that. Let it sit out at room temperature overnight because you want to beat it up really easily. Into that I'm going to add a bit of sugar and then some salt. And you can do this by hand or you can use a mixer, totally up to you. And then just cream these ingredients together until combined. So there you go, just creamed together, that's all we're looking for. Go ahead and place this onto our prepared parchment. And then just spread it out to fill your rectangle. Now to get it lovely and even here's what we're going to do. We're going to bring up the sides where our paper is and just fold it on those seams just so we reach those lines. So once you have it folded up into your rectangle just turn it over and kind of run your rolling pin just so you get it as even as possible and it has all the same thickness. And if it's not just give it a bit of a judge. Okay lovely, that's our butter block, into the fridge with this. Okay so for our next stage here I have my cold dough and my butter block is ready. So I'm going to roll out this dough on a floured surface to 20 inches by 8 inches into a rectangle. Now this is a very cold dough which is exactly what we want. So the rolling might just take a minute or so. Don't be afraid to flour your surface for this one and try as best as you can to get your dough into a rectangle. I know sometimes it can be a bit overly like mine is heading that way now but a rectangle is best because we're trying to get the edges to all line up together just like you would a croissant or any kind of laminated dough. While you're rolling if your dough is springing back let it rest for a few minutes and then it'll be easier to roll. This is a very lovely easy dough to work with so I don't think you'll have a problem. Our butter block fits perfectly. So here's my secret about the butter block. I let this sit out at room temperature for a few minutes just so it's not frozen solid going into my dough. I have never had success putting very cold butter blocks into doughs. They always burst out the sides. It's very difficult to work with. There's been many tears shed over laminated doughs where the butter was too cold. So I let it get a little bit soft. It's cold, it's firm but it's a little bit soft under my finger which will make it easy to roll out. Now here's what we're gonna do. Letter fold. Bring your dough over the butter block just like a letter. There we go. Make it into a rectangle. Fly your surface. Now this is where you need to concentrate. Turn your dough and we're going to roll it again to 24 inches by 8 inches. Now a secret with these doughs is to get it as evenly as possible. I know there's a thick piece of butter in the middle but what we're trying to do is get us the same thickness as we go all the way to the edges. We want that butter to be spread all the way throughout and not just stuck in the middle which can happen because it happened to me before. Let's have a little look here. Doo doo doo doo. Lovely by 8 inches. Lovely. Fold it again into a letter fold just like this. Lining up all those edges. Do you see that? Just give it a little tug. Make it into another rectangle. So that is our second fold. Now we're going to repeat this process two more times. Turn it. Don't forget to turn it. It's very important. And then again, 24 inches by 8 inches. Working your way all through the pastry. So let me tell you, at any point you're rolling out this dough and you start to see the butter come through or feel it get very soft and greasy, stop, wrap it up and put it back in the fridge. That butter needs to set and it needs to be firmer so you can roll it again. So as you're rolling your dough, if it's springing back too much and you can't get it to the right size, just give it a few minutes to relax on the countertop, then go back and roll it again. It will be much easier once it relaxes. I will say when you're doing a dough like this, don't be doing a million other things. You want to focus on this dough so your butter stays cold while you're rolling. We don't want a lot of hanging around here. Roll that butter all the way to the edges. Lovely. Okay, book fold again. Pull out these edges. Do you see the way? Not completely straight. Give it a little tug. We want to get these all lined up because this dough eventually will be really even and smooth, just like a rectangle. There we go. Our last roll, our butter is still in there. It's not coming out. Success. I'm very happy about this. It's still in there. It was nice and pliable and that's because I let it sit out at room temperature for a few minutes and take that really cold chill off it. Made it pliable and easy to roll. Okay, again, this is our last time, 24 by 8. So this pastry originated from Brittany and it actually came to be kind of by a happy accident where in very poor parts of Brittany they would take leftover dough, very poor people and they would cover it in butter and in sugar. They would let it rise and then they would bake it off and so the Queen Amman was born. They found it to be so delicious that it became a thing. Like so many other peasant dishes that have similar origins. You never know where something will come from. Now today it's probably one of the most, I'd say, Instagramed pastries. Now this is our last roll. I'm actually starting to feel the butter a little bit. So this is a good time to get it into the fridge. There we go. Bye. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Lovely. Okay, our last letter folds. Rub off any excess flour that we have. We don't need that. Give it a bit of a foldy over. I'm gonna pop mine into a bread bag. You can also do cling wrap. Just cover it up nice and tight. And then I'm gonna pop this into the fridge for a minimum of an hour. You can also leave it overnight if you wanted to. We need to get lovely and cold at the butter harden and then we're gonna roll it out again to assemble it. So my dough is lovely and chilled. It's nice and firm, ready to go. So we're gonna prepare our pan because we're getting ready to assemble. Here I have a cupcake pan. I'm going to grease it with some softened butter just like the way you would grease any pan. I am generous with this because the translation of its name is butter and cake. You wanna get as much butter in there as possible. Now you notice I did say softened butter and not melted butter because softened butter just kinda sticks to the well so much better and it's going to hold the sugar that we're going to add rather than like just hot melted butter. So here's what we're gonna do now. I'm going to add a little bit of sugar into the wells. Now this is a bit of a messy job but go all the way around coating the well and all around. Make a plan with somebody else to clean your kitchen after this. Lovely. Excess. There you go. Pan ready to go. Put that over to the side. Now we do have some sugar on our countertop and that's okay because we're moving on to our next step, sugaring your countertop. So sprinkle your countertop generously with sugar. Lay on your pastry. Now just so you know remember we were turning and rolling. Don't start your dough like this facing away from you, the seams facing you like this, seams going that way. With doughs like this, with croissants, with puff pastry, things like that, we're trying to create this grid of gluten formation so it goes like this. If you start rolling it all sorts of which ways, it will just be really thrown off and you won't get those lovely layers. So we're trying to roll it this way and roll it this way. We're not trying to go all over the place once your butter is added. And also sprinkle the top of your pastry with more sugar. So we're gonna roll out our pastry to 12 inches by 16 inches. This is going to give us 12 squares to fit our pan. The squares will roughly be 4x4 inches. If you need a little bit more sugar on your countertop, that's what it's there for. Don't be afraid to use it. This sugar will create a lovely shell on this pastry, a lovely crisp bite once it goes into the oven. So we want to work it right in there into the dough. Okay, so now we have our rectangle and we're gonna cut these into 12 squares and like I said, they're roughly around 4 inches by 4 inches. Okay, so now we have our squares. Here's what we're gonna do, pick up a piece of dough and fold in the sides or the corners just like this. And then pop it into your prepared pan. Bring those corners together just like this. And then pop it into your prepared pan. So our dough is in the pan, I'm just going to sprinkle a little bit more sugar on top just to get the very peaks of the pastry. Just like that. And now I'm gonna cover it in cling wrap. And as long as your kitchen's not too hot, let these proof at room temperature for around 45 minutes or so, we just want the dough to rise up a little bit. But we don't want it to get too warm or that butter to melt. Once it's done this last proof, it's time to get it into the oven. So it's been 45 minutes. Our little guys have puffed up a little bit. This is great. Now, when baking these, remember there's a lot of sugar and butter. Place your cupcake pan on a tray lined with parchment paper. There's so much butter and sugar in here, it can spill out and it will make a big mess in your oven if it does. So put it on a tray. And I just heard my oven ding. So let's get them right into that nice hot oven. Bake your quinamon at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, 190 degrees Celsius for roughly 30-35 minutes until they're a really lovely golden brown. Quinamon are out and they look beautiful. They're golden brown on top and you can see all that butter bubbling away. Now look at that. You see all those beautiful layers that was from all the folding that I did and the rolling and repeating and they just created this beautiful looking pastry. Let your quinamon cool in the pan for just 5 minutes before removing them. Remember we created a caramel here so we don't want them to go cold in the pan otherwise we won't be able to get them out. I recommend having these pastries with a cup of strong coffee just so it balances out the sweet and the butter and the sugar. Just a little note, these pastries are versatile. You can add in some chopped chocolate or even some spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. This pastry boasts that it is the fattiest pastry in Europe and I say that in the most loving way. It is flaky, it is soft, it is rich with butter, sugar, all these beautiful layers. This is absolute French pastry heaven. I hope you enjoyed this recipe, stick around because I've got hours more videos for you to check out. I'll see you back here again next week with a brand new video.