• Quiche Crust

    January 24, 2009

    Posted in: The Recipes

    Ingredients, for 1 quiche crust:

    • 2oo g flour
    • 100 g butter, cold and hard, like certain members of the male gender
    • 5 g salt (a pinch)
    • 1 egg
    • 2 T ice cold water

    Procedure:

    To Form the Dough:

    1. Sift the salt and flour together.
    2. Cut the butter into the flour, using either a pastry cutter or your fingertips.
    3. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the egg and water, using your fingers to barely mix the ingredients. They won’t really come together. You make that happen by using the “fraisage” technique: grab lumps of the dough, and, using the heel of your hand, drag them across a clean counter, one at a time. Do this just once. The dough will be immediately more supple.
    4. Press the two to four bunches of dough fraisé together. They still won’t really come together, which is good. Press the dough firmly into a ball. Wrap in saran wrap and then flatten into a disk.
    5. Let the dough rest in the fridge overnight, or store it there for a few days. This dough can be frozen and kept for up to a few weeks, although a fresh batch is always optimal.

    To Mold the Quiche:

    1. Let the dough warm up a little before use. It will fracture if it’s too cold, and refuse to flake if too warm (room temp is too warm.) You want it barely pliable. Work the dough momentarily through saran wrap. I like to form it back into a ball and flatten it again, in the span of abut 30 seconds. Overworking is your enemy here.
    2. Roll out the dough according to galette dough instructions, although you want to leave it about 1/4 thick in this case.
    3. Gently roll the dough around your rolling pin, and position over a buttered and chilled quiche ring or tart pan. Use your thumb to gently press the dough into the “corner” between the side and the bottom of your mold, turning the mold all the while with your other hand. The motion should be quick, fluid, and sure. You will learn with practice.
    4. Still using your thumb, press the dough gently to the sides of the mold, with an almost imperceptible downward motion. Then, place your thumb atop the mold and press down, rotating the pan. This creates an even lip of crust which is thicker than the bottom. This is the secret to molding an excellent tart crust, which is unfortunately absent from most recipes. The usual specification for “mold the dough into the tart pan” is incredibly vague, I realize, and withholds critical information, leading to tart blunders that forever discourage the home cook. If you’re wondering why my instructions are often novel-esque, it is because I hope to teach the skills of cooking along with providing ingredient quantities.
    5. Wrap the molded quiche in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm again, while you deal with the ingredients for the filling.
    6. Prick the bottom with a fork a few times, and blind bake at 180 celsius, with beans, until the edges are colored but the bottom is still pale. Beat an egg and brush the interior of the crust with it. Add the filling of your choice, and bake until done, about 20-25 minutes.

    The variability of ovens, altitudes, and length of cooking for different filling ingredients prevents me from providing a specific time. But this is good: I have found that since I liberated myself from strict adherence to cooking times, the quality of my baking has improved remarkably. In France, pastry chefs never pay heed to times or even specific temperatures. Most things are baked within the realm of 180 degrees celsius, and cooked for 20-25 minutes. Miraculously, this inclusive frame is effective in baking almost anything to golden brown perfection. The moral of the story here is not to feel beholden to pre-specified requirements; cooking is forgiving, baking a little less so, but with practice it is a science than can become increasingly artistic and personal. Rely on your senses more than anything: you can see when a crust is golden. Removing it before this point just because a recipe says you should is useless, and letting it bake more, to a crisp, is a waste. You will smell doneness, and hear the bubbling of  filling that is ready.

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