According to legend, about 160 years ago in Douarnenez, a small seaside town in the northwest corner of France, Yves Rene Scordia ran out of goods to sell in his bakery. The resourceful baker looked around his shop and spotted lean bread dough, sugar, and sea-salty Breton butter. He tucked a slab of the butter and a hefty amount of sugar inside the dough, rolled it out, folded it, and repeated the process before plopping the mass into a round pan, scoring the top, and sliding it into the oven.
As it baked, some of the butter and sugar leaked out of the dough and pooled at the bottom of the pan, where it cooked down into a subtly salty caramel. The butter that remained in the folds created steam that caused the layers to puff and separate into thin sheets that were soaked in butter and melted sugar. Scordia turned his creation out of the pan, cut it into wedges, served it hot to enchanted customers, and the kouign amann (the Breton name for “butter cake,” pronounced “KWEE-nyah-MAHN”) was born.
Rustic yet refined and distinctly salty and sweet, the pastry remains a hyper-regional specialty that’s eaten any time of day and celebrates the exceptional butter and
