I love this idea. So often these days I am too focused on what’s easy, what’s familiar, what’s going to get dinner on the table fastest. I miss the days when I would come home with a rabbit — oh to be young! — and open up my favorite Sally Schneider cookbook to find an impossibly involved recipe for ragù, which I would make and then serve over homemade pappardelle — oh to be young! — even if it meant serving dinner at 10pm. Today if I see more than five ingredients in a recipe, my eyes glaze over, I file it into the “perhaps-one-day” folder, and I move on to the “fast, easy, fresh” recipe. I love the spirit of this BA column so much that I almost didn’t write this post. Because the thing is that I cheated. One glimpse of those flaky, buttery, caramelized kouign-amann, and I thought: I need those in my belly. Immediately. And so I cheated. Because Nigella Lawson, with her food processor Danish pastry dough, has made me a cheater. I fell for her dough when I made cheese danishes with lemon-ricotta filling last spring; I fell in love with her dough when I used it to make cronuts last fall. Twenty years from now, I might just learn to laminate dough properly, but until then, whenever I see recipes calling for that butter block and that folded pastry dough and that laborious process, I will cheat. And I will not look back. Because this is the thing: Nigella’s processor Danish pastry is hardly cheating. It’s not opening a box of puff pastry, brushing it with butter, sprinkling it with sugar, pinching its corners and calling it kouign-amann. This pastry dough requires thought and planning and a little bit of elbow grease. The dough, made mostly in the food processor with butter, flour, yeast, etc., requires a night’s rest in the fridge. And on shaping day, it requires rolling and folding and rolling and folding and rolling and folding. And in the case of kouign-amann, it requires another night in the fridge. If you want freshly baked kouign-amann on Easter Sunday, you start Friday night. That’s tomorrow. That’s 36+ hours in advance. That is planning. That is work. That is love. And that is why you deserve kouign-amann on Easter morning — on any morning — regardless of how hard it is to make. Of all of the pastries I have made with Nigella’s food processor Danish pastry dough, this is the simplest, and it might be my favorite. The only addition to the master dough recipe here is sugar — there are no egg washes, no fillings, no toppings. These pastries caramelize so beautifully in the oven, and they disappear too quickly — truly, they are irresistible. You likely have all of the ingredients on hand to make these but do remember to plan ahead. A few other ways to use this magical processor Danish pastry:Cheese Danishes made with a lemon-ricotta filling that I absolutely love.Prosciutto & Gruyère CroissantsCronuts — I didn’t detail/blog about this process. If you would like some guidance, please let me know. No reviews Notes: This processor Danish pastry dough should rest in the fridge overnight, and the shaped kouign amann also rest in the fridge overnight. So, if you want to have freshly baked kouign amann for Easter Sunday, make the dough on Friday. If you need to rush the process, see the Cheese Danishes post.
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
