Kouign Meh-mah

When I first read about kougin amann on the Joe Pastry website, it was love at first site.

And, no, I've never actually eaten one -- that I can remember.  But when I was a kid, the ultimate in decadence was the butter cake from the local bakery.  Completely different animal -- more of a round sponge cake with brown sugar on top.  I hoped that the kougin amann would deliver the grown-up version.

I was feeling pretty cocky, having survived two laminated dough rounds with Cronuts Part I & 2.  I went out and bought a kitchen scale for the occasion, feeling this was baking with  big boys.  I did not get fancy Euro butter -- didn't have the time -- and just used Land O' Lakes. 

I woke up early, ran some 100m sprint intervals (how'dya think I'm surviving all this butter?), assembled my ingredients and proceeded to beat the hell out of my butter with a rolling pin.

A little too cocky, I'm afraid.  The lamination did not proceed as smoothly as with the cronuts.  I prefer the Daily Meal's method (or write-up), but I think this is a skill that will improve.  It's only my third time, after all.

While waiting for things to take off in the oven, I looked at some other recipes and realized there were some variants.  Baking in muffin tins seemed quite intriguing, to get more caramelization.  But nonetheless, Joe brought me to the party and we were leaving together.

Which was a mistake.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a good girl. 

Because after 25 minutes, they looked like this:

I was hesitant to leave them longer.  So we tried them.  And they were...meh. 

The best parts were the browned, burned parts.  And after reading a bunch of other recipes, that had them to bake slowly for about 45 minutes. .....I decided to put them back in the oven (I'm sure this is destroying some subtle chemical reaction) and got this after ANOTHER 25 minutes.

Huge improvement.  Huge.  Maybe it's just my stove, Joe probably has some amazing Viking thing. 

And.....not sure I would make them again.  Although I was committed to my cronut endeavors, this didn't have enough appeal for me to work again.  I think the boys would be far more thrilled if I took that laminated dough and made croissants -- preferably with a hunk of chocolate in the middle.