FOTY (From Oven To You) is a mono-product bakery in Shanghai that specializes in Kouign Amann, a beloved French pastry that originated in Brittany.
Kouign Amann at FOTY
Kouign Amann, pronounced “queen-a-mahn”, means “butter cake” in Breton, the Celtic language of Brittany. It’s a pastry of humble ingredients, made with butter, bread flour, and sugar, and often a pinch of salt. It’s slowly baked to caramelize the sugar. The pastry takes on many shapes: rolled or pinched into muffin-like form or as a spiral. FOTY does the latter.
One Kouign Amann at FOTY is ¥28. You can get it plain, or dusted with cinnamon sugar or cinnamon sugar and sea salt.
It’s crispy and flaky on the outside like a palmier with a slightly chewy center, almost like a croissant, and sticky with caramelized sugar. It’s a sinful pastry that’s utterly irresistible.
The things that tons of butter and caramelized sugar can do!
The pastry is made to order. A display board of baking time slots shows when the next batch is available. (Every 20 minutes.) You can pre-order on the coming time slot and pick it up.
Most customers tend to wait in the store, which is comfortable enough, plus, you can also watch the baking process.
What’s The Difference: Kouign Amann vs Palmier
I’ve been asked by a few people about the differences between the kouign amann and the palmier, so here it is:
Both are made with three key ingredients, flour, butter, sugar.
Kouign Amann use a laminated dough; requiring multiple folds of butter and sugar in the dough making process, and it has a higher concentration of sugar and butter compared to palmiers. Texture tends to be crispy, more bread-like, like a croissant.
Palmiers use a puff pastry dough, and the butter is more uniformly distributed. The filling (sugar, cinnamon) is folded into the finished puff pastry and immediately formed into shape. Texture is more of a flaky pastry.
Differences are in dough type, how the dough is made, folding technique, and shape. Similar but not the same! Hopefully that helps answer some questions.
The Location
FOTY also serves coffee, black (¥18) or white (¥28) available iced or hot.
It’s located on Fenggang Lu, around the corner from The Cannery. The shop also has ties with ice creamery and cafe Luneurs and Korean restaurant group Belloco (Botong Sikdang, Pado, Jeju Sagye).
Sorry not sorry for adding to your waistline.
FOTY (From Oven To You)
Address: A103, 1107 Yuyuan Lu (actually located on Fenggang Lu) 愚园路1107号A103（凤冈路上,不在愚园路）
Hours: Wed-Sun, 11am-7pm
