Kouign-Amann - World's Most Difficult and Best Pastry - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with clean aman that's right or should i say yes queen no actually I shouldn't no one should but anyway I'm very excited to be showing you my technique for what many people consider the hardest but also most delicious pastry in the world okay for something to be worth this much effort it has to be way past mind-blowing and this is so with that we'll go ahead and get started by making a very simple bread dough which will begin with some warm water some white sugar and some dry active yeast that we will let sit in a bowl for about 10 minutes to make sure it's alive and then once we have proof of life we will add a little bit of melted butter most but not all of our flour and a pinch of salt and then what we'll do is grab our most experienced wooden spoon and we'll go ahead and give this a stir until it comes together into a very very very wet sticky dough and by the way I'm using bread flour which I think works the best but all-purpose should work as well but anyway we'll go ahead and stir that together until it looks like this at which point we'll dump the last half cup of our flour on the table and transfer our sticky dough on to that and then what we'll do is sort of roll that around until it's coated in flour at which point we'll start pushing in and pressing and eventually kneading and in a perfect world by the time we've achieved a nice soft pretty sticky elastic dough all that flour will have been worked in and the reason we just didn't add it all at once is because I'm not sure we need that much so by using this method is we need it once it feels like it's right and all the flowers not absorbed yet we stop because it's right but if you just dump everything in according to a recipe and start kneading it may or may not be perfect so long story short this is how you really make bread okay it really is a feel thing and as luck would have it that was the right amount of flour and I did in fact end up with a beautifully soft slightly sticky fairly elastic dough which will go ahead and transfer into a lightly buttered bowl and then we'll cover that and let it sit for about an hour and a half or until it doubles in size yes of course in a warm spot and will do while we're waiting for that is make our season two sugar oh he how you heard me we're actually gonna take white sugar and add some sea salt or kosher salt to it and that is just one of the many secrets to this incredible pastry all right done correctly this is both sweet and savory so we'll go ahead and give that a mix and set it aside while we move on to prep our muffin pan which means brushing generously with melted butter and once that set we'll go ahead and spoon in our sugar and toss it around until the insides are coated and yes I missed you could just put the sugar in the cups and after we've spooned in a generous amount what we'll do is pick up the pan and give it the whole shake of sheikha as well as a nice assortment of tips and turns and once we're pretty sure everything's coated we can flip that over to knock out all the excess and sure if you want to clean the top off a little bit go ahead that's not a bad idea and I did I was speaking of clean up we want to make sure we scrape up any excess and add it back to our bowl since we're gonna need that stuff as you will see so we'll set that aside along with our prep pan and we'll go back and check our dough and this is what mine look like after about 90 minutes and then what we'll do once that's deflated as usual is transfer that onto a floured surface and we will kind of press that down into a vaguely rectangular shape and then using a rolling pin plus just enough flour so it doesn't stick we will roll that out into a rectangle somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick oh and if you were hoping for the exact measurements for the width and length you are definitely on the wrong channel but really the exact size doesn't matter just get it close to what you're seeing here and it's actually pretty hard to roll into a rectangle so once we get it like this we can just sort of stretch and pull it into the right shape and then once that set what we'll do is take an entire stick a very very cold butter right mine was actually frozen and very hard and we're gonna use this cheese grater to grate the entire stick onto our dough and if possible try to leave an inch unbuttered around the edges and by the way don't be a hero when you get down to a little piece just stop okay don't lose a knuckle and then what we'll do once that set is flour our hands and gently but firmly press that butter in and then what we'll do once our butter has been successfully flattened out just go ahead and fold this into thirds just like a letter if that helped and then once folded we'll go ahead and square that up the best we can by pressing stretching and or pulling and that's it our first phase is done we'll go ahead and transfer that onto a sheet pan wrap it in plastic and pop in their fridge for about 30 minutes and by the way if you thought an entire stick of butter was a ridiculously large amount for that little bit of dough wait until you see what happens next because what we're gonna do after we chill that for 30 minutes just pull it back out and we are gonna roll it back out into a rectangle roughly the same size as our first one although for some reason I went the other direction and just like the first rectangle it's hard to do it just with the rolling pin so don't be afraid to pull and stretch those corners and it's also not a bad idea to make sure it's not sticking to the table and then once that set believe it or not we're gonna grade over another entire stick a very cold butter so yes by the time we're done with this it's gonna contain a half a pound of butter although if it makes you feel any better the authentic version has more but anyway we're gonna butter that and press it down again using some nicely floured fingers and then we will fold that into thirds again and just like the first time once I was folded we'll go ahead and square that up the best we can but I'm like the first time we're not gonna refrigerate this all right what we're gonna do is dust it with flour and roll it back out into a rectangle and once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and fold that into thirds and I know someone out there just said hey you forgot the butter well first of all I'll do the jokes and second of all we don't need any more butter two sticks is plenty but anyway we'll fold that as shown and using only as much flour as we need we'll roll that out one more time at which point we'll give that the last and final fold and how many layers of butter did we build up I'm not sure I didn't count I don't much care but I do know we have enough and once we've completed that final fold we'll go ahead and transfer that to our sheet pan wrap it in plastic and transfer it into the fridge for at least an hour before we move to final assembly and then once that dough has been thoroughly chilled we'll roll it out but not on flour we're actually gonna sprinkle a generous amount of our seasoned sugar onto the table onto which we will place our laminated dough and before we start rolling we'll apply a whole bunch of sugar to the top and then what we're gonna do is roll this out applying sugar often and generously to both sides as we roll and once it feels like the sugar you've sprinkled on has been rolled in put some more on and one small heads up here because that sugar and salt is gonna start pulling moisture from the dough we don't want to take a tremendous amount of time to do this all right so be quick but don't hurry and like I said we'll keep rolling and sprinkling sugar and you're gonna be surprised how much we can actually roll in okay I'm not sure you're gonna use everything you mixed up but you're gonna use a lot and by the way some people add the sugar as they're doing their turns and folds but I prefer this method and it seemed to work out very well but anyway we'll keep doing that turning it occasionally until we have a rectangle between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick at which point we'll stop and take a pizza cutter and we will trim the edges and keep in mind we're eventually going to cut 12 squares which means cutting it 3 by 4 which means we don't want a perfect square although we do want the edges pretty straight so you can see I'm doing a little fine-tuning here and do not under any circumstances throw away those scraps you could just bake those off to make the world's best and most confusing cookies but anyway once I had that trimmed I made two cuts this way to make three pieces and then three cuts this direction so that we hopefully end up with twelve close two square pieces and those are definitely not perfect but as I like to say close enough for YouTube and that's it once those are Cobble go ahead and transfer those into our pan after he asks you guessed it sprinkling on some more sugar and then there are so many different ways you can shape these but my favorite is to do it so all four corners meet in the middle which is what I thought I was doing here they said my fingers had their own idea and as soon as I place that in I realized it didn't look quite right so I did another one it figured it out and here's how I really wanted to do it okay all four corners coming together in the center are you see that that I think's going to give us the best-looking Queen Oh mom so that's how I did the rest and actually when tree folded the first one which by the way would have worked and many people like to do them that way so suit yourself I mean you are after all the leprechaun of your Queen Amon and I know leprechauns aren't French but neither is this name it actually has Celtic origins believe it or not oh by the way don't be scared this snows gonna continue to rise so if it looks thicker when we shape it that's why and then what we'll do once those are all panned up just top them with a little more sugar because why the heck not and while some people do like to take their finger and kind of push it down the center to seal everything I don't and don't think you should okay I think that's gonna prevent them from pop it out and make it sort of the crown shape I'm going for alright people love pointy food and then what I like to do is let these sit for 10 minutes to give them a little tiny bit of a proof at which point those are ready to transfer into the center of a 375 degree oven for about 25 to 30 minutes or until beautifully browned and puffed and basically looking like one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen and then very very important if you don't pull these out of the pan while they're hot you are not pulling them out of the pan okay once that salted caramel cools they're gonna stick in the pan and you're never gonna get them out so while they're how carefully and quickly transfer those to Iraq where you should probably let him cool for at least 15 minutes before attempting needs and while I was waiting I gave him the old fork test so you could hear exactly how crispy these get oh yeah Fork don't lie and then after waiting in excruciating lis long 15 minutes I would infer taste and bit into the smallest ugliest one and that my friends has to be tasted to be believed okay we're talking sweet salty buttery crunchy sticky tender it just has everything and even though there was like a half pound of butter in these they are not greasy they're not heavy how is that possible I don't know and I don't actually even need to know so I went ahead and plated one up so I could take some pictures and of course he did another one and while you certainly don't want to overdo it the salt really is the key here okay if you like salty caramel you're gonna go nuts for these it's like a salted caramel sauce meets a croissant meets a potato chip and right here you're gonna get a great look at those beautiful layers we created with all that buttering and folding and of course that's always the big question at the end of one of these videos was it worth it and there's really no answer for that I mean is running a marathon worth it is climbing Everest worth it swimming across an ocean or trying to make pizza crust out of cauliflower I mean there really is no answer is it worth it although you know what after that last bite I'm gonna say I dunno and it is worth it which is why I'm gonna finish by saying I really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to food whooshes calm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy you you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,046,142

Rating: 4.9444747 out of 5

Keywords: Kouign-Amann, pastry, Croissant, french, butter, cake, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, baking, sweet, sticky, bun, breakfast, brunch

Id: RK7AAI6Zicw

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RedSquaree]

Holy mother of calories.

[u/helcat]

I’ve made this three times now. Absolutely killer.