(calm music) - Buttery, sweet, crisp, flaky, rich, all words that I would use
to describe Kouign Amann, which is the decadent pastry from the French region of Brittany. Now it is a decadent dessert, and the name actually
means butter cake in Breton which is the Celtic language
that's spoken in the area. Now, you don't have to book
your flight just yet though, because Lan's here and she's gonna show us a fantastic version that
we can make at home. - Bridget, I just love this pastry. You've described it with
some of my favorite words and I just can't wait to get started. - All right. - We're gonna start by
making a lean dough. It's got just a handful of
ingredients and it's really easy. - Okay. - I'm using 11 and 1/4 ounces, that's two and 1/4 cups, if you don't have a scale
of all purpose flour, and I've just got it
in my stand mixer bowl, I'm adding 3/4 of a teaspoon of table salt and 1/2 a teaspoon of instant yeast. Just gonna stir that together, and I've got one cup of
room temperature water. - That's it.
- That's it. Yeah, real simple. I am stirring this up
rather than sticking this on the machine right away. So I'll put this on the stand mixer, and I'm gonna mix it
on low for one minute, and I'm looking for
everything to come together and for all of that dry
flour to get worked in. - [Bridget] Great. - Now that the dough has come together, I'm gonna turn this up to medium low, and we'll let that run until the dough becomes
smooth and elastic. That usually takes about five minutes. Bridget, this looks great,
it's been five minutes. That dough has come together nicely. Let's get it out of the bowl. This is looking like it's
gonna stick to that counter, so I'm gonna throw a little flower down. We're gonna round this out. And kinda squish it into
about a five by five square. This looks great, I've
got a greased plate here. I'm just gonna transfer it to the plate. Throw some plastic wrap on top. Now that this is covered, I'm going to let it rest in the fridge and it can sit there for
one hour or up to 24 hours. All right, Bridget, now that
the dough is in the fridge, let's move on to the butter. - All right. - We're gonna shape our
butter into a packet with the help of this
little parchment sheet. I've folded it into a six
by nine inch rectangle. I'm just gonna open it up. - [Bridget] Okay. You do have instructions for how to fold that on our website? - We do, yes. I've got my stand mixer bowl from earlier. I'm adding 16 tablespoons
of salted butter. This is 1/2 a teaspoon of table salt. It tempers that sweetness a little bit. Makes it more interesting. Here, we're kind of moving away from what the traditional method is. You'll see why in a little bit. - Okay. - I'm gonna add our sugar
directly to the butter. This is 3/4 of a cup of sugar. For now, let's get this together. I'm gonna mix this on
low for about a minute. I'm just looking for
everything to be well combined. This looks great, now I'm
gonna transfer all of this to our little packet. So let's wash this down a
little bit, fold it over. I'm just gonna press this down till it's about 1/2 inch thick. That looks pretty good,
now we'll refold this. - And then you send it in a letter to me. - I mean, the post office
will deliver anything if I put a stamp on it. Great, just wanna make sure
it's nice and rectangular. And I'll use a rolling pin to smooth the butter into the corners and make a nice flat butter packet. This is looking nice and
smooth, nice and squared off. I'm gonna get this into the fridge as well, so it can firm up. And that's gonna take about 45 minutes, but you can also do this ahead and have it in the fridge up to 24 hours. Bridget, it's time to get that butter and lean dough together. I've got a nine inch round
here and I've greased it well, both on the bottom and the sides. And the grease isn't there
to facilitate release. It's actually there to hold
our parchment in place. - Okay. - And it's the parchment
that's gonna help us get this pastry out of the pan. I'm gonna press this into
the bottom of the pan, and then I'm gonna plead
it so that the bits that are sticking up
are stuck to the sides. - [Bridget] Okay, great. - This looks great. Parchment's not in the way,
that's all I'm looking for. So let's move this to the side. Now I have had this butter on the counter so it can warm up
slightly from fridge temp. And this I've actually just
removed from the freezer. I want them to have the same malleability so that when I press them with the pin, they move in the same way. It helps them come together better. - Yeah, okay. - And it's just 10 minutes in
the freezer, really simple. Get rid of this plastic, flour my counter. And I'm not worried about
working too much flour into this, little bit for the top. And I'm gonna roll this out until it measures 18 by six and a half. Keeping the short side parallel to me. - [Bridget] Okay, great, lovely. - Now, butter packet, this
is going right in the center. Peel this off, now we'll just fold this
over to encase our butter. If it springs back or you missed the mark and it's a little short, it's okay to give it a little stretch. That looks pretty good, and
I'll just pinch these seams closed across the center
and down the sides. While I'm doing this, I wanna make sure that I don't have a ton of air in there. Air is gonna puff when we bake
this and we don't want that. We want nice compact, flaky layers, - Right, we wanna control the puff. - Yes, making sure that my pastry is nicely
flowered on the bottom so it doesn't stick. Now I need to roll this out until it hits 21 inches by seven. A little bit wider than seven's okay. Butter's still kind of firm,
it's not gonna roll too easily. A nice way to help is pressing gently. Working my way down the
pastry, it thins out the butter and makes it a little bit easier to roll. So I'll go down and then across. Now the traditional
method for this pastry is to just scatter sugar over
that butter, but sugar's coarse and it can tear the dough. It also pulls water out of the dough, which turns into a syrup
and that oozes out the side. Makes a hot mess, and we do not want that. We're a little bit wider
than seven, but that's okay. Now before I fold this over, I'm gonna brush off any
extra flour from the top. The flour on the top will
keep these layers separate. And again, we want those layers to be nice and tight so that they can
absorb all that butter instead of puffing away from it. - Compact.
- Yes. So I'll fold the top over, quick brush. And this is just a simple trifold. We're rolling it to 21 by seven. We're gonna do two trifolds in total. That's enough to create
plenty of layers for this. I'm gonna use that pressing
motion one more time. So this looks great, brush, fold. Okay, that is it for our folds. - [Bridget] Lovely. - Next we have to make this into a round. - Oh, spoke too soon. - I'm gonna roll this
into an 11 inch square. I just wanna flatten those
layers together a little bit. Set myself up for making that round. This is kind of my favorite part of this. We're gonna take the corners and we're gonna fold them into the center. You don't have to be
super precise about this. And this gets us close to our round. Now the best part, we're
just gonna squish it. - Oh, okay. - Right, so I'm gonna
come in from the sides and kind of just mush
it in, mush it this way. And now we'll flip it over. - Come on. - Right, a little bit more flour. Tuck the corners, and I'm gonna give it a little nudge, right, now I'm gonna roll it out one last time and do a nine and a half inch round, and then we'll get it in the pan. - Okay, great. - That's pretty close. So just pick it up, slide it in place. - [Bridget] Lovely. - There we go, now that it's in the pan, just one last bit before we bake. I've got a tablespoon of milk here. I'm just gonna brush it onto this pastry. This milk is just gonna
help the pastry bake up a little bit more golden. And we'll score a
decorative pattern in here. You can kind of put as many
or as few as you want in here. - Gorgeous.
- Last step. I've got a tablespoon
of sugar right on top, and it's just gonna add
a nice little crunch. Finally, I'm actually
gonna dock this pastry. I'm gonna create little vents all the way down to the bottom. I'm putting in about four of them. And it's gonna allow air
that is inevitably trapped between those layers to escape. It'll help the pastry layers stay flat and soak up all the
butter that's in there. - Because we want pastry to
soak up butter and sugar. - Always.
- Yes. - This is gonna go on the middle
rack of a 375 degree oven. It'll bake until it's deep golden brown. That takes 50 minutes, maybe an hour. - At America's Test Kitchen, recipe development is serious business. - Head over to americastestkitchen.com and unlock 14,000 expert developed recipes and 8,000 unbiased product reviews. All rigorously tested by our team. - Access every episode of every season of your favorite cooking shows. That's 38 seasons of inspiration. - And with the ATK members
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fingertips, anywhere, anytime. Join us and become a smarter cook. - Start your free all
access trial membership at americastestkitchen.com today. - How great does this look? - Gorgeous. - As great as this looks, it needs a little bit of time in the pan. That pastry has to cool a
little bit, it'll firm up. It's really soft right now, actually. - Okay, so how long?
- 10 minutes. - That's not too bad. 10 minutes are up, Lan. - Set a timer, I see, so I'm
gonna invert it onto a plate. - You hear the drop, always a good sign. - And I shall lick the parchment. - The reveal, delicious. You can see it still needs
a little bit of setting up. - Gorgeous, the smell of
the caramelized butter. It's outrageous right now. - So good, now I'm gonna be
serving it on this board. And it can go right on our
serving board, just flip it over. - Lovely. - And you know how you talked about crisp? - Yes. - We gotta wait 30 minutes for crisp. - I will wait for crisp. Listen to that. - [Lan] Now this is supposed
to serve eight to 10, but I cut us bigger pieces. - [Bridget] Eight to 10. I know, right? That's so funny. Oh my goodness. Good grief. I just wanna take a moment and marvel at that striation in there. It's just beautiful, all
those layers in there. Held together with butter and sugar, creating the most (indistinct)
syrups in the world. - [Lan] Oh, the best, they're brilliant. They're absolutely brilliant. - I love everything about this,
the texture is unmistakable. You get that hearty wheat flavor, but it's so delicate at the same time. - There are little pockets
of water where it gets bound with the sugar and there's
like a jellyish syrup. It's delicious. - [Bridget] This is the
ultimate of French pastry. - [Lan] You know, it's scary, I can polish off a half of
this, no problem, and I have. - You have?
- Yeah. - Well, before I polish
off the rest of this, I got a little business to do. So thank you Lan, for making
this beautiful pastry. You're gonna wanna make this and it starts with beating sugar
directly into the butter. Before rolling it in a parchment envelope. Roll out the dough just enough so it can encase the butter block and dock the pastry to
prevent spots of dry dough, or too much lift. From America's Test Kitchen
and the coast of Brittany. Breton, Kouign Amann, Kouign Amann. - We hope you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it. - Don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe to our channel. - And if you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, head over
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