France and the Alps · Volume 12, Choucroute, Bière de Garde and the Double Border
Tarte Flambée
Alsace
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- 10 sources cited
As tradition built it
Serves 4 as a starter, more as a light meal. About 20 minutes once the oven is hot.
Ingredients
- 250 g strong flour
- 150 ml water
- 1 tbsp oil
- a pinch a pinch of salt
- 200 g crème fraîche, or a fromage blanc and crème fraîche mix
- 200 g onion, very thinly sliced
- 150 g smoked bacon lardons
Method
- Mix the flour, water, oil and salt to a smooth dough, no yeast, no proving. Rest 15 to 20 minutes.
- Divide and stretch each piece by hand, as thin as it will go.
- Spread with the cream, scatter with onion and lardons.
- Bake in the hottest oven you have, as close to 280 to 300°C as it will reach, for 2 to 4 minutes, until the edges blister and blacken slightly and the cream bubbles.
What a modern chef changes
Real heat found, not compromised for.
Rung 3.
Method
- Bake on a preheated stone in a Big Green Egg run as hot as it will safely go, dome closed, rather than in a domestic oven; the aim is genuinely to approach the wood-fired benchmark, not to accept a longer, cooler substitute.
- Stretch the dough as thin as it will honestly go without tearing. A thicker base cannot crisp in the short time high heat allows, and ends up gummy regardless of oven temperature.
- Judge doneness by the blistered, slightly blackened edge, not by a clock. Ovens and setups vary too much for a fixed time to be reliable; the visual cue is the real instruction.