Kouign Amann (Breton Layered Pastry Cake)

Ingredients:

260g plain cake flour
150g cold, lightly-salted butter
150g white sugar (caster/granulated)
10g fresh yeast or 5g active dry yeast (not instant)
125ml (1/2 cup) lukewarm water you may need a little more
extra flour for dusting
1 tbsp fresh milk
1 tbsp salted butter
powdered sugar for serving

Method:

Dissolve the yeast in 125ml (1/2 cup) water. If using dry yeast, leave it in a warm place for 10-15 minutes until it’s foamy/bubbly. If you're using dry yeast you can go straight to the next step.

Tip the flour either in a bowl or directly on your work surface and create a little well in the centre. Pour the yeast mixture into this, and, using your fingers, mix it all up to form a rough dough.

Knead the dough by hand for a good 5 minutes, until it’s all stretchy and smooth. Place in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a cling film or tea towel and leave in a warm place to rise for 1 1/2 hours until practically doubled in volume.

In the meantime, get the butter out of the refrigerator and sit on a large sheet of baking paper. Ensure that the piece of baking paper is large enough so that you can fold it over, completely covering the butter. With a rolling pin, beat down on the butter to flatten. This is actually much easier than you think. Roll it slightly to help it to flatten into a rectangle roughly about 23cm x 15cm (9 x 6in), give or take. An little more or less either way doesn’t really matter. Return the rectangular disc of butter to the refrigerator until needed.

Grease your (round) cake tin and line with baking paper. Grease the baking paper.

Now comes the hardest part, folding the dough to create layers: Pre-heat your oven to 180˚C (160˚C fan/350˚F).

When the dough has rested for 90 minutes, turn onto a lightly-floured work surface. Flatten the dough, sprinkle some flour over it and start rolling it out into a rectangle measuring about 28cm x 20cm (11 x 8 in). Essentially, we want rolled out dough that’s about 5cm (2-in) wider than your flattened butter, all around.

Now remove the butter from the fridge, and with it still in the baking paper, place it on the dough to see if the dough is big enough with 5cm (2-in) extra all around. If not, roll out the dough a little bit more.

Working quickly, especially if you have warm hands, take the wrapping paper off the butter and place the butter centrally on the dough.

Sprinkle most of the sugar on the butter slab, reserving about 2 tbsp.

Now fold the edges of the dough over the butter, overlapping the dough. You will have to stretch the dough to make it overlap. That will be easy to do, as it’s an elastic dough.

Now we are going to fold and roll out the dough 3 times.

For the first fold: Roll the dough out to form a rectangle. Then fold the top third of the dough down, and fold the bottom third over the top you’ve just folded down. Basically you want the top and bottom thirds to meet in the centre of the dough.

Then you need to fold it in the same way in the other direction too (so the left and right sides meet in the middle). If it’s not long enough to fold, just pat it down hard or roll vert gently and slightly to make it a little longer. Now, you’ve completed the first fold.

Second and third folds: Repeat the folding steps (roll into a rectangle, fold, fold) 2 more times. You can do it a 4th time if you fancy.

After the third fold, roll out the dough gently, to form a rough round shape. Don’t worry too much about it being a perfect round, you can fit it into the cake pan.

Fit the dough into the cake tin. Brush the milk all over the top of the unbaked kouign amann (this is your glaze).

Using a bread lame or a scoring tool (blade), score some shallow cuts all over the top of the kouign amann.

Sprinkle half the remaining sugar all over the kouign amann, then dab the extra butter all over. Transfer to your pre-heated oven and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

When done, sprinkle with a little pounded sugar, let it cool slightly, cut into slices and serve.