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.

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.

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