My friend Lesley is the best of foodie friends.  She’s always in the know of all good eats, mind and she enthusiastically shares everything.  For a party in her honor, what is ed she brought pasties, and kouign amann in particular.  While these breton butter cakes have been taking San Francisco by storm, I’ve been blindly noshing on less decadent pastries.  One bite of Lesley’s offering, I vowed to upgrade.

Thanks to the Internet, there’s a few compelling recipes a mouse click away.  The #1 search result is David Lebovitz’s kouign amann recipe from 2005!  I’m already 6 years behind, so I have a lot of baking and eating to do.

Using Lebovitz’s recipe with minor tweaks*, combining it with Shanti Star’s kouign amann recipe’s folds, I get some snacky desserts on the second attempt.  The first attempt were hockey pucks as I had to leave the dough in the fridge for 8 hours.

The resulting mini cakes were rich and caramelized goodness.  However, I would have preferred a lighter pastry and will need to experiment with proofing times before baking.

* ex. 6 grams of SAF instant yeast, instead of the 12 grams of active yeast.  Also instead of adding more flour for the dough to come together, I fold the dough to build structure.