Tarte Flambee from scratch
This is a great use for sourdough toss (the extra you are pouring off when you are feeding your starter)
I do not have exact measurements for any of this, it’s just not a measurement kind of thing, but I’ll try.
You need
- Dough (enough to make however large of a tarte you want to make, use sourdough starter, the feel of the dough should be like a soft bread dough, this dish is what bakers used to make to test if the bread oven was ready) I would say about two cups, so maybe a half cup of starter, a cup of flour, then add water until it’s the right consistency. If you are fresh out of sourdough, go ahead and use yeast, one and ¾ cups of flour, and enough water to get the right feel, it will be fine. The feel I am talking about is an elastic dough that does not stick to your hands and can be formed into a ball.
- Flour (about 2 cups)
- Water (some)
- Yeast (a teaspoon of granules or a half cup of sourdough starter)
- Crème Fraiche (make this by putting a cup of heavy whipping cream mixed with a tablespoon of buttermilk on the counter in a covered container for about 24 hours. Shake it up in there somewhere, you’ll know it’s ready when it has the consistency between yoghurt and sour cream)
- Salt
- White pepper
- Nutmeg
- Bacon, browned, cut into little bits, however much you want to pile on there (think a handful of cut up bits, ¾ of a package?) You can use ham, but why would you?
- Onions, cut into little bits, however much you think you can get away with (one medium sized onion)
- Something to bake it on, a pizza stone works (you will want to warm that up before you use it), but so does a cookie sheet, this is not actually a fussy recipe. Cover this liberally with flour or use parchment paper.
- Something to bake it in (an oven, or you can build your own bread/ pizza oven in the yard, might want to start that project about two weeks before you are planning to make this, though) preheat to 450 (degrees, Fahrenheit)
Making it:
Make your dough up, knead it for a while, you are looking for elasticity, a dough that does not break when you pull it between your hands, and let it rise until it’s doubled its size, covered. Once that is done, you are going for a pizza-esque thing here, so roll out, stretch out, pull out the dough to cover whatever you have decided to use for the baking conveyor. If you are doing this on the counter, put the stretched-out dough shape onto your chosen conveyance.
Put crème fraiche onto the proto tarte. Think pizza sauce, and then a little more
Put bacon/ham onto the crème fraiche
Put the onions onto the bacon/ham
Stick it in the oven for about 10 minutes. Then check, it might take a bit longer, it might not. Don’t burn dinner. You want the dough to be cooked, the crème fraiche to have dried out a bit and the onion to have browned on the edges.
Full disclosure, I make this in a cast iron pan, as a personal deep dish, and that takes a bit longer to cook. YMMV.
Also, there are a bunch of really fancy recipes for this out there, and if that is your thing, go for it. To me, this is literally one of the most basic things one can make, provided one has crème fraiche on hand and has a sourdough pet. Mine is named Mordred, because I only feed him King Arthur.
If you make this with sourdough starter and let it have its first rise over night, it’s going to be relatively low carb, the fermentation consumes a lot of the starch in the flour. No, I don’t know how much of it, sorry.
And now you know why I don’t write recipes, and why, when someone asks me for one, I have a very deer in the headlights look and usually tell them it’s a family secret I have been sworn to take to my grave.
Let me know if you try this and how it worked for you 😊
Added pic, it’s not mine, they never last long enough in this house to take pics, it’s from here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tarte_flamb%C3%A9e_alsacienne_514471722.jpg
