Taste le Tour with Gabriel Gate S07 2011 ep130 Kouign Amann Breton Cake
Channel: Peter J Warren
Date: 2020-07-10

A region rich in history, charm and beauty, this is south Brittany - with a peasant-style cuisine where butter is often the star, especially in the delicious shortbread-style cake
called gâteau breton and in the great speciality of pancake called galette.
The movement and the skills of the crêpière are admirable. It’s beautiful to watch, but the key of a good galette is the crispness of the buckwheat flour.

There is nothing more creative and rustic in Brittany’s gastronomy than its charcuterie. Look at this, they have created a sort of petit paté - it’s a pressed ham covered with vegetables so the fishermen can take it overnight while they are fishing. 

Then there is salami, just flat like a galette, - they call it a galette - that you can cut lengthwise and put in a baguette for lunch.  And then the pièce de résistance, look at this, andouille de plouharnel - it is a big sausage, very rustic.
Made with the guts of the pig, absolutely delicious. I love it but definitely it is not for vegetarians.

This is so good, the pork crackling, the moisture, the sweetness.  It’s irresistible.
Yum!

Kouign Amann
Kouign  Amann Breton Cake 

The kouign amann is a most unique cake which third generation pâtissier, Jean Marie Blanchot, has cooked all his life.

Q 
So why is it so popular?
A
Because it’s made with salted butter, salted from Guérande.  It’s very tasty.  With the toffee it’s just sensational.

The kouign amann is made like a croissant dough.  You mix a little bread improver, some yeast and plain flour together with salted water until it forms a dough.  The dough is covered and refrigerated for one hour.

Then the dough is rolled out, some butter is placed in the centre and the sides of the pastry are folded to neatly cover the butter.  The pastry is rolled out to a long rectangle, then folded in three, as you would when making puff pastry.  

It is refrigerated for thirty minutes, then rolled out again and coated with a generous amount of sugar and folded again before being placed in the fridge to rest for a further thirty minutes.  The last step is then repeated one more time and rested again for thirty minutes.

The pastry is removed from the fridge, rolled out to about one centimetre thick.  Today Jean Marie makes two cakes – one about twenty cm in diameter, the other about twenty six cm diameter.  

The corners of the dough for each cake are folded to meet in the centre. The dough is gently pressed into two buttered cake tins, covered and left to rise for two hours in a warm place.


It is then baked in a pre-heated oven at 200°C for about thirty minutes before being turned out onto a rack.

It’s beautifully caramelised.  It’s sweet and buttery and so good!  

Merci, Jean Marie.


PTC
The northern part of Brittany is amazingly beautiful and tomorrow we discover some of its glorious seafood cuisine.