Yes, you read that correctly! Kouign-Amann pronounced Queen-Ah-Man.
This is a Bretonese pastry, Breton in France, the thing to remember is the Breton's do not consider themselves to be French, hence why their version of the French Language has its own nuances and spellings.
So What is a Kouign-Amann? Supposedly the most difficult pastry in the world to make! My mind isn't made up on that yet, I'll explain why later.
It is a laminated yeasted dough, lamination being thin layers of dough with butter in between, like a Croissant or Danish Pastry, but instead of using flour on your work surface to roll it on you actually use a mixture of sugar and sea salt, and this gets rolled into each layer as you roll and fold the dough, as you do for Croissants.
It is then cut into squares and the corners are folded into the center and it is put in a muffin tin or an individual baking pan. you then cover it and let it puff up slightly before putting it into the oven to bake.
If you have successfully completed this process you should have a beautiful round expanded pastry that has opened up on top like a flower and has a nice caramelized sugar crust on the outside where it was baked in the muffin pan or baking cup.
Now as to why I'm not sure it is the most difficult pastry: I wasn't satisfied with the plain Kouign-Amann dough, so I thought how to make it a bit different, put "My Twist" on it.
Well how about Laminating a Brioche Dough? So I did. I made it a little bit stiffer than a normal Brioche Dough, in order to be able to roll it and laminate it, but it works. So I think by using a Laminated Brioche Dough, I've made it even more difficult. I also don't roll the Sugar and Salt mix into every layer, I roll a Cinnamon Sugar mix into the last layer. Which gives you the beautiful effect you see in the pictures.
