I’m glad they came out nicely

Time: 5 Hours 40 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 3/5

Kougins Amann is something that looks like it would be pretty difficult to make. That’s what I’ve been putting it off for so long. Making a laminated pastry, which is just dough with butter layered through it, just seems like something that could very easily result in a big mess instead of a pretty dough. I’m going to trust The Baking Bible with this recipe. Hopefully it puts me on the path to success.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

The ingredients for this recipe are super simple. I would recommend that you use a good quality butter with a flavor that you like, as it is a major part of this recipe. Also, make sure to let your butter come to room temperature before starting. I had mine sitting out for about 5 hours before starting. I didn’t have quite enough superfine sugar, so I supplemented what I had with some regular table sugar. I didn’t leave anything out of this recipe.

Tools:

Stand Mixer
Clean Surface
Rolling Pin
Bench Scraper

Cooking Review:

Melt Butter & mix dry ingredients: 7 minutes

Before bringing the dough together, I melted the two tablespoons of butter in the microwave. While I was melting the butter on a low power in intervals of 30 seconds, I weighed out and measured the dry ingredients in the bowl of my stand mixer and mixed them together.

Mix & Knead Dough: 35 minutes

I added the butter and water to the dry ingredients and let the stand mixer knead it together for 5 minutes on speed 3. I occasionally scraped down the sides to let all of the flour get involved. After kneading, the dough was pretty smooth and just slightly sticky. I covered the dough to let it rest for 30 minutes.

Butter Square: 6 minutes

While the dough rested, I put the butter on a piece of plastic wrap and formed it into about a 5” square. To do this, I folded the plastic wrap over the block of butter and used my knuckles and fingers to coerce the dough into a square shape.

Laminate & Fold Dough: 15 minutes + 1 hour refrigeration

To begin to laminate the dough with the butter, I lightly floured a clean surface and formed the dough to an 8” square using the rolling pin. Next, I transferred the butter square, still wrapped in plastic wrap, to the center of the dough square, rotated 45 degrees to the dough square. I marked the shape of the butter into the dough using a bench scraper. I rolled out the flaps of dough outside of the markings, then put the unwrapped butter in the middle of the dough. I folded each flap across the butter, getting rid of any excess flour between each flap. The seams were pinched together to seal the butter into the dough. Finally, I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about 13x7 inches and folded it into thirds, like a letter. I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator for an hour.

Second Fold: 4 minutes + 1 hour refrigeration

I rolled through dough out into another 13x7 rectangle and folded it into thirds again before wrapping in plastic wrap and refrigerating for another hour.

Sugar Fold: 8 minutes + 1 freeze & refrigeration

I sprinkled about half of the sugar in a rectangle about the size of the dough on my work surface. I put the dough on top of the sugar and rolled it into a 14x8 inch rectangle, flipping occasionally. Before folding, I sprinkled most of the remaining sugar on top. The dough was wrapped in plastic wrap and put in the freezer for 30 minutes before being transferred to the refrigerator for another 30 minutes.

Form: 20 minutes

In the last few minutes of refrigeration, I cut out some aluminum foil strips and made some rings that were just under 4” wide and 1” tall. Next, I rolled out the dough into a 16x8” rectangle and used the bench scraper to cut it into 8 rectangles. I rolled each rectangle out to about 5.5x6 inches and folded in the corners to the center twice before transferring to the aluminum foil rings set on an oiled baking sheet.

Rise: 31 minutes

I covered the baking sheet with another inverted baking sheet and let it rise for 30 minutes while the oven preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bake & Cool: 44 minutes

I baked the pastries for 12 minutes before turning the baking sheet 180 degrees and baking for another 12 minutes. Once golden brown and caramelized, I removed the aluminum foil rings and transferred the pastries to a cooling rack to cool for 20 minutes.

Analysis:

The day before I made these, I bought a Kougins Amann from a bakery. The morning I made these, I ate that Kougins Amann, so I have a pretty good reference. These Kougins Amann are very crispy on the outside and have nice layer definition. The center is pretty soft and buttery. The sweetness level is actually quite a bit lower than the one I bought, which I can appreciate, but honestly, I would’ve liked them to be a little sweeter. The bread itself has a nice flavor, enhanced by all that butter that went into it. I was actually pretty impressed with this recipe. It made something that was somewhat intimidating pretty approachable and it came out pretty good. I don’t think it was quite as good as what I bought, which maintained its crispiness even deeper into it before getting soft and chewy. In any case, I was happy with what I made. I’m going to give this recipe an 8/10.

Kougins Amann