Growing up in Lorraine, and Lorraine being Alsace’s close neighbor, I am quite familiar with tarte flambée, which is an Alsacian Specialty (they eat it in Germany and close regions as well). It’s literally translated into “flamed tart” but has nothing to do with being flamed. The word flamed probably comes from the fact that tarte flambée used to be cooked in very hot wood ovens and very quickly, therefore the crust border turned all burnt and black by the intense heat. Flammkuchen is the Alsacian/German translation that we also use when talking about tarte flambée. If, for whatever reason you end up in the Eastern part of France, and more precisely in Strasbourg (which is a magnificent city) you can go to this wonderful brasserie right next to the cathedral (I think it’s called Caveau Gurtlerhoft) to experience a sinful tarte flambée. The traditional is made out of crème fraîche, fromage blanc, onions and lard fumé (thick cut bacon), you have other variations, such as the vegetarian, or with mushrooms, etc…and also salmon like this one. I sometimes substitute heavy cream to crème fraîche, but it will not work here, you need the thick consistency of crème fraîche for the topping. 

Tarte flambée is a peasant dish, just like pizza. The original tartes had a rectangular shape, and eaten burning hot and rolled. Nowadays, most restaurants serve them round, probably because it’s easier to cut in slices, and you don’t have to burn your fingers rolling them, even though few restaurants still make them rectangular like in the old times.

If you want some different and fun alternative to pizza, try one of those, you won’t be disappointed, they’re so delicious, and easy to prepare. You can use a bread dough or pizza dough, it just needs to be rolled very thin.

Ingredients for 2 tartes

• Bread dough about 5.30 oz (or 150 gr) per ball, (recipe here)
• 4 tbs crème fraîche (2 on each tarte)
• 8 tbs Fromage blanc or Page Greek yogurt
• 1 large yellow onion, cut in half and thin sliced crosswise
• 1/2 lb (or 250 gr) smoked salmon
• salt and pepper
• chives, chopped for decoration

Preparation

In a mixing container, mix crème fraîche and fromage blanc.

Form two little balls with the dough and roll them thin.

Place dough on a pizza dish. Spread evenly the crème/fromage blanc mixture. Add onions, then add salmon. adjust with salt and pepper. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 400F, for about 15 minutes or so. Remove from oven, and sprinkle with chives. Serve very hot.

I decided out of the blue one day to make pain d’épices…I think last time I had one slice I must have been 10 years old. What is pain d’épices? Well it’s another one of those traditional French breads or cake that is popular in Alsace region. It’s literally translated into “spice bread”, simply because it has many spices. It could be an distant ancestor of the Ginger bread, but the French one has no ginger so, I would not even try to compare it to ginger bread.

Pain d’épices is made with honey and rye flour, and no sugar even though some recipes include brown sugar. Of course some recipes vary slightly from one to another; this version has no butter nor oil, so no fat and no eggs. Its consistency is very similar to the one I am used to eating in France…chewy, dense and very flavorful.

The origin of pain d’épices is traced back to ancient times (as far as the Egyptians) and was brought to Europe from China by the Crusades. They brought back the recipe and the spices, It was then spread over Europe during the middle ages, and the first Pain d’Epices called Lebkuchen was found in Germany in 1296. But it’s in Reims in XVII century that the Masters of Pain d’épiciers (Maîtres de pain d’épiciers) were officially recognized by King Henri IV as a specialty company. Reims remained one historical city linked to this bread. Nowadays there are two different kinds of Pain d’épices, the one from Reims made with mainly rye flour and the one from Dijon made with mainly wheat flour. Think that that we have a Museum on Pain d’épices in Alsace, called Musée du Pain d’épice et de l’art populaire Alsacien so that’s a serious deal!

In this recipe I use already packaged spices “épices pour pain d’épices” I bought during my last trip to France, but you can use loose ones, so I will give you the quantities for regular loose spices.

Pain d’épices can be served with savory dishes such as foie gras, or salmon…it can be eaten as is with a cup of hot chocolate, or as a toast with butter and jam, even prepared as a French toast, or combined with fruits in verrines (this will be on my next post). So as you can see its use is quite wide.

I was thinking that for someone with a savory tooth like mine, I did quite a good job with the sweets lately. The beauty of it is that I always share half of my sweet concoctions with my neighbor…otherwise I would break the poor scale. Unfortunately I am not among the lucky ones who can eat anything and remain thin…I have to work at it!! Oh well, maybe in my next life!

Ingredients for one loaf

• 4.4 oz (or 125 g) wholewheat flour
• 4.4 oz (or 125 g) rye flour (you can also use 250 g rye only)
• 7 oz (or 200 g) honey
• 1.7 oz (or 50 g) agave nectar
• 6.7 fl oz (or 200 ml) milk
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp star anise powder
• 1/4 tsp cardamom powder
• 1/4 tsp clove powder
• 1 tsp orange peel powder (see picture above)

Preparation

In a mixing bowl combine honey, agave nectar and lukewarm milk. Mix well to dissolve the honey. Add flours gradually whisking well to obtain a smooth and homogenous mixture. Add the rest of the ingredients. Place in a bread pan previously buttered and floured to prevent from sticking. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 365-370F for about one hour. Let it cool and serve warm or cold.

My lovely and adorable acupuncturist, Heidi gave me some starter that is supposedly 250 year old, can you imagine? Maybe Thomas Edison ate bread using the same starter…Heidi is amazing, she is not only a sweet and great doctor but she is an excellent baker. So if you need a good acupuncturist, go see Heidi, you will not regret it, she will relax you while giving you tips on how to make great bread!

I have to admit that I don’t consider myself to be a great baker but growing up in France, I am a baguette snob and addict. Eating bad bread in a restaurant can ruin my meal. I tried making baguettes, here and there but I never managed to make bread like the one you get at the boulangerie. I never made bread using a starter before, only fresh yeast. I thought why make bread when you can buy good one. Well, in France you can, almost all the boulangeries make great baguettes, you just walk down the street and get your baguette, end of story. In the US, it’s not always the case but I still didn’t want to go through the trouble of bread making, that’s as simple as that…but always thinking, “oh that would be so great to make my own baguette”…such a conflictual thought!

After buying Tartine’s book called “Tartine Bread” (for those out of town who don’t know Tartine Bakery, it’s a famous bakery in San Francisco whose country bread is simply incredible) and reading some of it, I got once more a little discouraged about all the details and the process in making levain and its bread. So after I got the starter from Heidi, I figured I would use her starter (levain) and use a few ideas taken from Tartine Bread book. I have made baguette using poolish, traditional French baguettes don’t use a starter. Poolish is basically a yeast starter, it’s the same process than a regular starter, but you put same quantities of flour and water, and a little tiny quantity of fresh yeast and let the mixture ferment.

In this baguette, I used half starter and half yeast, so you can taste a little bit of the sour flavor of the starter, but it’s very subtle. I have never really liked sourdough baguettes, I thought the flavor is too strong and the bread too compact, not airy enough..Maybe I am used to the traditional French baguettes…

So if you are in the mood for a long process and are committed to it, go ahead and try this, you will love these baguettes. Kneading and touching soft dough, is even more relaxing than a massage! BUT WARNING….You need to be patient and not in a hurry so this is not for the impatient types. If you have no patience, do not start this process, you might get frustrated. But if you’re up for the challenge, don’t think twice! Crunchy crust, the inside is moist, wonderful nutty flavor…After eating all this bread this weekend with cheese, I will avoid getting on the scale.

Ingredients for 4 baguettes

• 300 g starter (see here for recipe)
• 600 g bread flour
• water
• 2 tsp sea salt

For the poolish

• 200 g water
• 200 g flour
• 10 g fresh yeast (dissolved in lukewarm water)

Preparation

Prepare the poolish the night before. Dissolve yeast in water and in a small container, mix with flour to obtain a smooth and semi-liquid batter. Cover with a towel and let it rise for one hour or two, then place in the refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, using a large mixing container, mix starter and poolish, then add flour, water and salt. The quantity of water depends on the texture, you need enough water to make the dough soft and slightly sticky. Knead (your hands will have dough sticking to them) for a little while, then let it rest and rise for one hour. Then every 30 minutes, knead the dough lightly to “chase” the air. Repeat the process for 3 hours (every 30 minutes a beating).

Remove dough from container, and cut in 4 equal pieces, add flour to work the dough if necessary. Make rectangle shape dough pieces. Fold dough taking one end folding it up. Repeat the process about 10 times. Form baguettes, place on a baking stone and let rise again for about 2 hours.

Pre-heat oven at 500F, and at the same time, place a small metal container filled with water in the lower level of the oven.

Using a razor blade, make cuts on top of baguettes crosswise.

Place baguettes in oven and cook for about 30 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

I reconciled with cinnamon thanks to Rui, my lovely Japanese neighbor. I decided I didn’t like cinnamon after moving to the US, where cinnamon is used in almost every dessert. I think I had a cinnamon overdose and refused to eat anything where I could taste it. Rui, gave me half a loaf of bread she made even though she said it didn’t turn out very well and was embarrassed to give it to me. I gave her fresh yeast a few days earlier, and she used it making this bread. One thing I never told her is that I don’t eat cinnamon and that I have been on a cinnamon rebellion for years. Jamais de cannelle !!! So I politely took the bread and what else to do? since I am polite, I tasted it, even though you could smell cinnamon one kilometer away…I thought well, if I don’t like it, will I be lying and tell her, I love it, or be honest and say, I hate it? Tough call, what would you do? Polite or brutally honest?

I was lucky, it was love at first bite! What a delicious, moist, and soft bread, a pure delight for breakfast with butter and jam. Then I thought “well, for someone who doesn’t like cinnamon, I did a pretty good job finishing it”.

After that happy encounter with cinnamon, I decided to make my own bread…yes with cinnamon…actually, this bread is closer to a brioche than to what we French call bread. It has the ingredients and texture of a brioche. Now thinking about it, we do have a bread that is called “pain brioché” which is something in between a bread and a brioche, so talking about nuances and making people confused, yes the French are the masters of it.

It’s faster to make than a bread or a brioche, you don’t have to prepare it the night before, so it’s a great recipe to have in hands. Essayer c’est l’adopter! To try it is to adopt it.

Ingredients for one loaf

• 8.81 oz (or 250 g) flour
• 0.52 oz (or 15 g) yeast
• 3.7 fl oz (or 11 cl) milk
• 0.35 oz (or 10 g sugar) + 1 tbs
• 1 small egg
• 5 g salt
• 0.88 oz (or 25 g) butter
• 4 tbs raisins
• cinnamon to taste

Preparation

Dissolve yeast in 1/3 of milk. In a recipient mix milk/yeast mixture, sugar and 1/5 of the flour, mix well and let it rest for about 1 hour. Add the rest of the ingredients (except raisins, cinnamon, 1 tbs sugar) and mix well, to form an elastic dough, knead the dough for about 15 minutes.

Form a ball, and let rise for about 2 hours. Flatten the ball to form a rectangle, spread 1 tbs sugar raisins and cinnamon. Roll the dough and let it rise for another hour. Using a brush, spread some yolk on top. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 45 minutes.

After many unsuccessful attempts to make my beloved baguette, that led to frustrations, I finally managed to make some that made me quite happy. My mom makes bread in a blink of an eye and her bread always turns out delicious, without really any need for it, since they are surrounded by amazing boulangeries (bakeries). I figured being in a “non-baguette” land, I  needed to be able to make them, and there was no question about it. I was determined to try as many time as necessary, you cannot just stop at a few failures, can you?

I was determined to never give up trying even if it would take me months or years. I baked baguettes a few times with a starter (levain),  and quite unhappy with the results, the bread came out crunchy, then the crust would soften and become a little chewy (I hate chewy bread), and the inside was not airy enough, quite dense and that’s not a sign that the bread is right. I really don’t like heavy crumb, after a few bites, it feels you ate some iron. The taste was ok but not quite what I wanted and did not want to post something I thought was not right nor eat it.

After constant searching, and reading boulangers sites like this one www.boulangerie.org and with their amazing recipes that I will try soon, I found another wonderful blog dedicated to baking called Le Pétrin, so for those of you who read French, I strongly suggest it, if you are in a baking mood and interested in bread-making. The explanations are very clear and precise and her breads, patisseries, croissants, brioches are just amazing. I realized that good bread-making takes time and the process is long, so I am afraid you just cannot cut corners. It has to do with all the chemical reactions involved with the flour, water, and yeast…and there is no way you can just make bread in two hours, or at least baguette. What I like about this baguette is that the bottom part is very crunchy, very well cooked, almost burnt and hard with a very nutty taste, that you get in well cooked in some breads.

This mini baguette (20 cm) is made with a fermented dough made the night before, and mixed with a regular dough made the day you are actually baking the baguettes. It makes the crumb (the inside part of the bread) very light and fluffy. This quantity is for 4 mini baguettes (about 20 cm long).

There are so many recipes for baguettes, just because there are many kinds of baguettes, made with different techniques, flours, and so on, so this is one recipe among many others.

You’ll have some fermented dough left, you can keep it up to three days in the refrigerator or in the freezer for 3 months.

Ingredients for about 4 mini baguettes

For the fermented dough

• 5.20 oz (or 150) white flour
• 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• (0.008 0z) 2.5 g salt
• 6.1 fl oz (or 180-200 ml) water

For the dough

• 17.63 oz (or 500 g) flour
• 10. 65 fl oz (315 ml) water
• 0.14 oz (or 4 g) fresh beer yeast
• 4.4 oz (or 125 g) fermented dough
• 0.35 oz (or 10 g) salt
• 0.84 fl oz (or 25 ml) water

Preparation

For the fermented dough

In a mixing bowl, mix flour with yeast, then add water and salt. Mix with a wooden spoon, then start kneading the dough for about 5-10 minutes until it becomes smooth and rubbery. The dough needs to be a little sticky when touching it.

Start forming a bow, and place it in a container lightly oiled and allow the dough to be very slightly coated with the oil. Cover with a plastic wrap and let it rest for 1 hour.

Quickly knead the dough to let the gas come out, then place back in the bowl and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.

For the dough

Remove fermented dough and leave it at room temperature for one hour.

Take the quantity you need and place the rest in the refrigerator well wrapped.

Place flour in a mixing bowl with water and mix with a wooden spoon. Knead well until the dough becomes smooth but without too sticky. Cover the container and let it rest for one hour.

Mix fermented dough with the regular dough and add crumbled yeast, knead the dough. Add salt and water gradually and knead for 5 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Cover the container with a plastic warp, let it rest for 1h30 and after 30 min bring both ends toward the center.

Remove dough from container and lay on a floured working surface. Cut the dough into 4 pieces. Cover with a towel and let rest for 20 min.

Take each piece and form baguette and place on parchment, thin extremities. Leave about 4 inches in between each baguettes. Cover with a towel for one hour.

Pre-heat oven at 400F  and place a small container like a cup (something that will handle that heat) in the oven while it’s heating up. When ready to place baguettes in the oven. Add water to the container so that steam will form and close the door immediately.

Make 2 cuts with a wet razor blade on top of the baguettes, then place them in the oven. 30 seconds later spray water on the sides of the oven to humidify bread. Close oven door quickly and let it cook for about 20 minutes or until baguettes have a golden color. Leave the bread for 5 min after the oven is turned off.

This is my mom’s focaccia or signature appetizer, it’s what they call in the region she is from in Italy “crescia”. Different regions have different ways of calling the same thing and crescia is more like the local name of a focaccia, since local dialects are very much still spoken in Italy, and that is the first language I learnt how to speak. No wonder why when I started going to kindergarden in France, no one would understand me.

She serves this as apéritif with prosciutto, other cold cuts and cheeses. You can stuff it with mozzarella and tomatoes, prosciutto and pecorino, or anything you like. I added some spelt flour to the dough as a little twist.

Focaccia in Italian or Fougasse in French, (mainly consumed in the South of France) are very similar, it’s a base of bread dough with olive oil in it and topped with olives, and other local products.

This is a version of the traditional focaccia, that has been quite popular when I have guest over for brunch or apéritif with olives, salami and cheeses.

Ingredients for 6

• 7 oz (or 200 g) white flour
• 3.5 oz (or 100 g) spelt flour
• 1/4 cup lukewarm water to dissolve yeast
• 1/2 cup lukewarm water
• 5 tbs olive oil + 1 tbs to sprinkle on top of focaccia
• Kosher salt
• 1/4 onion, in small pieces
• 2 rosemary sprigs
• 1/2 tsp rock salt

Preparation

Mix both flours in a container. Dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. Slowly add yeast to the flours, add the rest of water, mixing progressively, add olive oil, and Kosher salt. Mix well to form a compact dough. You might need to check if the dough is too hard, add water, but don’t make it too liquid either, it needs to be elastic but not sticky. You need to knead the dough for minimum 10 minutes, until the dough turns elastic and smooth.

Place dough in a container and cover with a towel, let rise for about 2 hours, then knead the dough again and let rise for another hour minimum. Knead the dough once more, then place in a tray, and spread with your fingers to get a 1/2 inch thick dough, then with your fingers, make wholes in it, all over the surface. Add pieces of onions and rosemary in the holes. Sprinkle with olive oil and rock salt. Let stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 370F for about 20-30 minutes. Let cool and cut in small cubes, or larger pieces to stuff them with the ingredients of your choice.