We give a new construction of the Brownian annulus based on removing a hull centered at the distinguished point in the free Brownian disk. We use this construction to prove that the Brownian annulus is the scaling limit of Boltzmann triangulations with two boundaries. We also prove that the space obtained by removing hulls centered at the two distinguished points of the Brownian sphere is a Brownian annulus. Our proofs rely on a detailed analysis of the peeling by layers algorithm for Boltzmann triangulations with a boundary.

47 pages, 4 figures