The kouign-amann is a laminated Breton cake of bread dough, salted butter and sugar, folded and folded again until the sugar caramelises into a lacquered, shattering crust.
Where to eat it: 5 restaurants across 1 city.
The name is Breton for butter cake, and the recipe belongs to Douarnenez in Finistère, where a baker is said to have improvised it in the 1860s from bread dough, butter and sugar when he ran short of other ingredients. The proportions are close to a third each, which is why it eats the way it does. It travelled across Brittany and is now baked as far away as San Francisco and Tokyo, but the Breton version is still the reference: a single large cake cut in wedges, or the individual kouignettes that Rennes shops sell by the piece. Rennes bakeries compete on it openly, and the crust is the tell, because a good one crackles and a poor one is merely sweet.
Common allergens: Gluten, Dairy
Tip from the editors. Bake on a tray: the sugar boils over and burns onto an oven floor. Turning them out hot is the difference between a kouign-amann and a permanent fixture.
Boulangerie Hoche bakes one of Rennes' benchmark kouign-amann at 17 Rue Hoche, and its pastry team has riffed the galette-saucisse into a tribute cake.
Tip: Rue Hoche holds this bakery, 16h30 and the Nabuchodonosor in one block; come hungry and compare kouign-amann.
Worth the queue: Kouign-amann
Le Fournil des Halles bakes a three-generation kouign-amann recipe near the Halles Centrales in Rennes, alongside far breton and buckwheat galettes.
Tip: Their kouign-amann is sold in packaging that keeps it three weeks, the one Breton pastry that survives a suitcase.
Worth the queue: Kouign-amann, plain or apple
Maison Larnicol stacks its bite-size kouignettes on Rue Le Bastard in Rennes, the Breton chocolatier founded by Meilleur Ouvrier de France Georges Larnicol.
Tip: The kouignette is the travel-size kouign-amann; the rum-raisin and salted-caramel-apple versions are the ones to mix into a bag.
Worth the queue: Kouignettes in a dozen flavours
La Tête Enfarinée is a small artisan bakery on Rue de Coëtquen in central Rennes, folding its kouign-amann in AOP French butter, open Sunday mornings.
Tip: One of the few centre bakeries open Sunday morning; time it with the Criée market across the block.
Worth the queue: AOP-butter kouign-amann
Boulangerie Elluard bakes with organic flour on Rue Saint-Hélier in Rennes, an artisan shop between the station and the Vilaine known for its kouign-amann.
Tip: On the walk from the station into town, this is the bread and pastry stop; mornings have the full range.
Worth the queue: Organic-flour kouign-amann
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