La tarte flambée

Tarte flambée

La tarte flambée, or flamme-küche, is a speciality from Alsace.

Imagine the thinnest pizza base covered with crème fraîche, lardons, onions, and if gratinée, rapé. In the oven, and oplà, piping hot under your nose!

I’m not entirely sure it’s pizza base, because you do not sense any yeast and there no proofing involved, but every time I ask they say it’s pizza dough…

I’m a speaking a strange language? Yes, I know and it’s called French!

Let’s get to the anatomy of this Alsatian staple:

The base: I’m not entirely sure it’s pizza base, because you do not feel any yeast and there is no proofing involved, but every time I ask they say it’s pizza dough…

Crème Fraîche: it’s basically a very thick (aka very fat) and not so acidic sour cream. They make a thin layer of it over the pizza base.

Lardons: it’s stripes of think bacon, not smoked. They lay them over the crème fraîche.

Onions: they cut them thinely but not to much, and they go on the same layer of lardons.

In case the tarte flambée is gratinée, over the crème fraîche they put a layer of rapé, grated gruyere cheese.

They are cooked in wood or electric oven, at a very hot temperature, like pizza.

It’s one of the most delicious crunchy dish I’ve ever tried!

Tarte flambée

Pizza dough

If I say pizza and what do you think?

I hope you think of Italy, because it comes from here and more precisely Naples. No pineapple, no salami, no strange, exotic  toppings.

The one I prefer is the simplest of all, a pizza margherita: tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. Sometimes the better pleasure in life are most simple.

But today we concentrate on how to make a good pizza dough at home. Then, in the privacy of your homes, I won’t advocate on how you top your own pizza ;) .

Basic Recipe

500 g flour, a mix of 0 (or manitoba) and 00

12,5 g fresh yeast, o 3,5 g dry yeast

2 teaspoons sugar

280-300 ml warm water

1 heaped teaspoon of salt

1 spoon of extra virgin olive oil + more for baking

For 2 30 cm circular pizzas

  1. In a large bowl mix crumbled yeast (if fresh), sugar and water. Be careful with water temperature: it must not be hot, but just warm. Otherwise it will kill the yeast.
  2. When it begin to bubble, add the rest of the ingredients.
  3. Begin to mix to amalgamate all the ingredients. When you have a bowl, transfer everything on a floured working surface and begin to knead. Keep kneading for at least 10-15 minutes, until your dough is silky and not sticky any more.
  4. Lay your dough in a large bowl, cover with a wet tea towel and let it rise for at least 2 hours or when it double its volume.
  5. When is risen, punch it, knead it briefly and let it rise for a second time, for at least 1 hour. (if you have no such time, let it rise the first time the night before in the fridge, then let it rise for a second time during the day, always in the fridge, and then at night it’s ready to be cooked once it’s a room temperature).
  6. Oil 2 baking tins (better glass or no stick), divide your dough in half and roll it out on the tins with you hands, with circular movements. The dough doesn’t have to fill completely the tin, as raising again it will expand. Let it rise for at least 30 minutes.
  7. Preheat your oven at 220° C or full rack.
  8. Once the oven is hot, top your pizza the way you prefer and cook it for at least 15.20 minutes, or until slightly golden.

Now that you have your pizza dough, how will you top it?

Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Bread

I recently had the fortune to put my hands on a 22 years old pasta madre, levain, sourdough (kind courtesy of Semerssuaq*).
I was always afraid of sourdough: I mean, it’s alive! What if it dies? What if I kill it???
Well, apparently it’s not so simple to kill it! If you take good weekly care of it, well, it will survive, kicking lively in your fridge!
And the bread, oh the bread: unbelievable!

200 g of sourdough
500 g of strong flour
1 teaspoon of salt
300 ml of water

Mix the sourdough with the water.
Add flour and salt, and knead for 20-30 minutes (better with a stan mixer: you’ll need only 10 minutes).
Let it rise in a big glass bowl, covered with film, for at least 3 hours.
pre-heat the oven at 200° C.
Cover a baking tin with baking paper and lay the dough, making a rounded ball, no kneading. Cover it with the bowl and let it rise for at least 30 minutes, better 1 hour.

Cook for 30-40 minutes, until knocking on the bottom it sounds hollow.

Let it cool completely before slicing it.

Daring Bakers: Julia Child’s French Bread

Julia Child's French Bread

I love Julia Child! Love, love, love her! Last summer I read her biography and I was just startled by her voice: clear, gentle, friendly…
So, when I saw this month challenge I thought: “GREAT! A dream comes true!!!”
I knew that when Mary and Sara chose this particular recipe they were going in the right direction toward the true spirit of the Daring Bakers!
Never, in the whole of my life, I would ever dared to make a bread that needs an entire day to be made!!!
And by an entire, I mean it: I began around 10am last Sunday and I end up with the bread ready to be cut for dinner, around 8 pm!
An overall 6 hours of rising it was a mystic experience!
Ad the rules were allowing me to use a stand mixer, I bail out, and I used my beloved one… But the time you have to wait, the fact that you have to be patient and careful while your gluten is forming to the right consistent, and the fact that you have to wait other 2 to 3 hours to let it cool before to eat… Well, it was a mystic experience!
Of course the bread didn’t come out like the one you buy in France, even if I used French flour to make it!
As Julia, Mary and Sara say the problem is the home oven!
But I NEVER made a bread with that kind of breadcrumb!!! It was amazing! And I was so pleased!
Expecially beacuse, remember, I married a French! And he was very pleased to!!!
To celebrate we ate it with a nice Fois Gras aux pruneaux we bought last time we were in France! A glorious dinner!

Thanks Daring bakers to make me dare!!!!
Here the recipe by Breadchick Mary.

P.S. I know, I know: the windows in my home have horrible dirty glass! I hate to clean windows! Every time I do it, it rains the very next day! Let’s just hope my mum do not see this picture!!!

Daring Bakers: Tender Potato Bread

Potato bread focaccia, with mixed cured meat

Warm focaccia filled with Parma Prosciutto: to die for!!!

Last time I’ve seen Annemarie in London, we just ended the Bostoni Cream Pie challenge, and we were a bit disappointed about our Chiffon cake turned out…
Then we moved to one quite corner, and whispering, we spoke about the new challenge. She already had the time to look it up, so she revealed to me what was about. At first we thought: “oh, that’s it?”
But then I remembered that once, the mother of one of my former boyfriends, told me that she was adding a boiled potato to the normal pizza dough, to make it fluffier… And her pizza was one of the best home made pizza I’ve ever tried!!!
So, here we are with this amazing potato bread!
Flour: the recipe was calling for all-purpose flour, suggesting to use an organic one, so I did. Not any fancy big name organic flour, just the Esselunga (the most widespread supermarket chain in northern Italy) organic all-purpose flour. And then for the whole-grain, yet again Esselunga organic whole-grain flour.
Potatoes: recently we’ve been to France, and shopped at the supermarket (I love to shop in French supermarket: you can find so many amazing stuff!!!). So I bought French potatoes and, honestly, they are very good potatoes: in Italy is difficult to find potatoes as good! Quite floury, good for baking, wonderful for boiling, and I would use them for Italian gnocchi too…
Yeast: I’ve used fresh yeast, 25 g. I rarely use active dry yeast, only when I don’t have fresh yeast at home and I have the urge for pizza…
Of course I knead the entire loaf by hand, and, as usually, it was a wonderful moment, very liberating, as if I was detoxifying from the whole working week and free my mind to reach higher level of relaxations…
Of course if “normal people” would read this last sentence they would rather think I’m completely crazy, but all my fellow Daring Bakers would absolutely agree with me: kneading is good for mind and soul!

And I have to say that this recipe, especially the quantities, are just perfect! I haven’t use a single gram more of the indicated flour!

And as the dough was quite a lot, I made:

Potato bread

A small loaf

Potato bread Rolls

Rolls

Potato bread focaccia

Simple focaccia with coarse salt

World Bread Day: Sumac Focaccia Bread

Sumac focaccia

Today it’s World Bread Day!!!!
I consider focaccia a type of flat bread, as it is the way I eat it most of the time: if I have friends coming over and I do not have fresh bread, I knead a focaccia (my Kenwood chef knead a focaccia, to be precise), and the appetizers are saved!
And sometimes, with focaccia, I get a bit “inspirational”… This time I had some sumac lying around and so I sprinkle the top of it before to bake it… And I even made it whole grain this time…

300 g of wholegrain organic flour
100 g of strong flour
7 g of fresh yeast
300 ml of warm water
1 teaspoon of sugar
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sumac

Dissolve yeast with sugar and warm water. Add flours and salt, and knead.
Let it rise or at least 1 hour or until it doubled its volume.
Lay it in an generously oiled oven proof dish and let it rise again.

Preheat the oven at maximum, sprinkle focaccia with sumc and bake until golden.

Serve straight away.

Madly baking!

The big hole.jpg

Waiter there’s something in my bread” really encouraged my bakery instincts! After the bread I baked yesterday my only thought was: “Bake! Bake! Bake!”!!! Plus I was truly inspired by some of the wonderful entries, and especially by Patricia‘s recipe, so I hope she won’t mind if I made something similar, yet different, to her wonderful Berry Twist Bread!
It was days I was looking for something not to sweet for breakfast, but I didn’t want to wait for an entire overnight fridge rise (as fo the French brioche), so I’ve used the basic recipe for Stollen, from Patisserie Maison, and I changed it just a little, to meet my objectives…

15 g of fresh yeast
13 cl of lukewarm milk
100 g of strong flour
300 g of flour
2 tablespoons of honey
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of grounded nutmeg
4 egg yolks
75 g of melted butter

60 g of raisins
40 g of pistachio nuts

4 tablespoons of marmalade

First make the dough. As usually I’ve used my wonderful Kenwood chef with the kneader hook.
In the kneader bowl dissolve the yeast in the milk, let it rest for 10 minutes, then add all the ingredients, except raisins, pistachio nuts and marmalade.
Begin to knead at the lowest speed and after 10 minutes, knead at speed 2 for 5 minutes, then lower the speed at minimum and knead for another 5 minutes.
Make a ball and let it rise for 1 hour and half, covered with a tea towel.
After the given time, knead a little (by hand this time) and begin to add raisins and pistachio nuts. Once they are completely mixed with the dough, roll it out on a floured surface on a rectangle 1 centimeter thick. Spread it with the marmalade (I’ve used homemade orange marmalade), roll it, fasten the ends, and let it rise for another hour in a cake pan.
Preheat the oven at 170° C.
Once is well risen again, bake it for 30 minutes.

Serve cold with a nice mug of coffee!
Enjoy!

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