Until a couple of weeks ago I had never heard of a kouign amann, let alone tasted one. Turns out the baking blogosphere has been raving about these pastries for a couple of years. I had some catching up to do, and fast! With a little help from the folks at theKitchn (link to recipe), I can now tell what the hoopla is all about.
The best way to describe these: a croissant and a palmier collided at high speed and fused into flaky caramel butter heaven.
A few kitchen notes:
1) I used one teaspoon of instant yeast. Any more than one teaspoon would be way too much.
2) I used salted butter from Trader Joe's. Maybe it is worth it to use something fancier, but honestly they turned out so good, and the caramel flavor predominates so much, I am skeptical that more expensive butter will make much difference.
3) I baked these in individual aluminum pie tins. I buttered the tins generously, dropped the individual pastries into the tins, and then crimped the sides all the way around so that there was no place left to rise but up.
4) I added a pinch of fleur de sel to the top, along with some extra sugar, right before baking.
