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Following in the footsteps of the Great British Bake Off: The Kouign Amann Challenge

We heard that Brittany produces a lot of butter and salt so we were intrigued to try some of there salty buttery desserts. A slightly salty cake may sound strange but is actually quite nice, if not a little heavy! We bought some Far Breton which is a type of flan with prunes. We are not huge fans of prunes so this cake was not our favourite. However, we  were also curious to try Kouign Amann which is a flaky buttery cake that featured on Great British Bake Off. 

Slices of Far Breton and Kouign Amann


The Kouign Amann caused many problems on the Great British Bake Off as nobody had ever heard of this breton cake. However, in Brittany, you will find this cake in every bakery. Having tasted the local boulangerie's Kouign Amann, we were inspired to make our own. We knew it would be a challenge but if they can make it on the Great British Bake Off, so can we! 

We wanted to use an authentic French recipe so we used this excellent recipe from the Marmiton website which also includes a really helpful video. If you understand French, we definitely recommend looking at the original recipe but if you cannot, we have translated the recipe. This recipe contains vast amounts of butter and sugar but have no fear, the butter is what makes the cake so flaky and delicious!





Ingredients:

250g strong plain flour

200g salted butter

200g caster sugar

10g yeast

2 pinches of salt

100ml water

  1. Mix the yeast with 3tbsp of luke warm water.
  2. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast mixture. 
  3. Mix the flour and yeast mixture together until it forms a dough. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave to rise for 3 hours at room temperature.
  4. Meanwhile, take the butter out of the fridge so it will soften. Butter a circular cake tin.
  5. Once the dough has tripled in size, roll the dough into a square about 1cm thick.
  6. Spread the butter on the dough leaving a 3cm border on all the sides. Pour the sugar on top of the butter. 
  7. Fold the dough into thirds, making sure that none of the butter leaks. Use a rolling pin very gently to roll out the dough again.
  8. Fold the dough into thirds again.
  9. Cut the dough lengthways into 2 strips. 
  10. Roll up each strip like a swiss roll and put them in the cake tin. (We used one cake tin but you could use 2 mini round tins for individual Kouign Amann). 
  11. Leave the cakes to stand for 30 minutes.
  12. Preheat the oven at 210C.
  13. Bake for 35 minutes. After the first ten minutes, spoon the melted butter from the bottom of the cake tin over the cake so they will turn golden brown. Repeat this step every 5 minutes while the cake is cooking.
  14. Leave the Kouign Amann to stand for 15 minutes before taking it out of the tin. Sprinkle 3 tbsp of sugar over the cake and serve warm. 




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