Simple quiche Lorraine recipe with an egg-free alternative

Hi Bold Bakers, as you know we have done a lot of sweet baking here on Bigger Bolder Baking but did you know there's a whole world of savory that I want to venture into. A quiche Lorraine is something that I learned to make at a very young age and it's a really great one to add to your ever growing repertoire. As always the recipe can be found on biggerbolderbaking.com along with all of my other savory recipes so make sure you check them out. Into a large bowl we're going to add in some flour and salt. Our next important ingredient to make our pastry nice and flaky is cold butter. I like to cube it up so it's easier to rub in with your hands. Then go in with a clean pair of hands and just rub in the butter into the flour until it resembles kind of coarse breadcrumbs. You want big lumps of butter and small lumps. Now people always ask me when baking what kind of butter do I use, and I always use salted because it adds extra flavor, however it is preference so use whatever you like. There you go so it takes no time at all and this is what it should look like. Now you can also do this with a dough cutter and that will work well. Okay so now into this we're going to add in our wet ingredients. So here I have a little jug, and I'm going to add in one egg, and a little bit of water. And then just whisk those two ingredients together. Now if you do not eat eggs, don't worry, you can always just use all water and that will work well. But the egg just makes the pastry that little bit richer. Okay so now here's my little tip about adding liquid into a dough or even into a pastry, don't add it all in. So I'm just gonna add in the majority of it, and I'm gonna keep a little bit aside, And then I'm gonna mix the dough with my hands to see if I need that extra bit of liquid. The thing about it is you can't take it out but you can add it in. Just be aware of that. So my dough could do with a little bit more liquid so I'm gonna add a little bit more in. And then just continue bringing it together with your hands until it forms a ball. Perfect. Okay so now what we're going to do is just cover this in cling wrap and now we're gonna pop it into the fridge for a minimum of roughly around an hour. What you want to do is just let it get nice and cold so the gluten relaxes and it'll be ready to roll out. So in the meantime, let's make the filling for our quiche. Now it is a typical custard, it is eggs, cream, a few other ingredients. However, if you do not eat eggs, don't panic. You can replace the eggs with a chickpea flour and that will thicken and cook out really well and I'm going to put that information on the website. So go ahead and crack your eggs into the bowl. Next we're going to add in cream. Now you can use any cream for this, it doesn't have to be whipping cream so it can be like a table cream or a pouring cream, that's fine. Add in a little milk. Then we're going to add some Gruyere cheese, now you can also use cheddar, any kind of cheese that you like, Swiss would be lovely, Irish cheddar would be super yummy because it's nice and sharp, so in you go. And then of course one of my favorites, bacon. Now the bacon is already cooked nice and crispy, if you don't eat bacon you can use like maybe peppers, onions, whatever you want to put in your quiche, go for it. Then lastly I'm gonna crack in a little bit of freshly ground pepper, and a little bit of salt, just to bring out all the flavors of everything else. And then with a whisk, just mix it all together. I love quiche. So this is looking good, lovely and thick and creamy. I'm gonna set it over to one side and check on our quiche crust. So our pastry is chilled and now we're ready to roll it out. So just sprinkle your surface with a little bit of flour, pop on your pastry, and then just roll it out to a nice big circle. So you want to roll it out roughly around 13 inches by 15 inches and that'll give you a nice big circle. Took me a long time being a pastry chef to get my pastry to actually come into a circle. just have to keep on working it and moving it. There we go, that's it. So now what you want to do is roll it up on your rolling pin, backwards, this takes a little bit of skill. And then I'm just gonna gently lay it into my dish that has been lined and buttered. Then just very carefully push your pastry into the edges and along the base. Making sure it's nice and snug up the sides. And as you can see we have a lot of pastry overhanging, this is perfect. Lovely. This is a really great pastry for maybe chicken pie, any kind of a savory pie dish, this is perfect. So I used a 9 inch cake pan because I wanted my quiche to be really thick and have a lot of filling. But you can always use a pie pan, a 9 inch one and that'll work well too. Okay lovely. Now we're gonna take a little knife and we're just gonna trim around the edge of the tin. This will just tidy it up for us. Okay fantastic. Then, you can do this any way you want but I like to crimp it with my fingers, so just go ahead and create nice little kind of scalloped edges around the rim of your quiche. You can also do this with a fork and that'll work well. Just something nice and pretty, all the way around. So now our next step is to take a fork and all you want to do is just prick it on the base with your fork and this will allow the steam to release while it's baking and it will stop your crust from rising up. So when making a quiche you need to blind bake your crust. Now what that means is you need to pre-bake it before you add in your filling and it just stops you getting a soggy pastry bottom, and nobody wants a soggy bottom. So I have a square of parchment paper here, and just push that into your pastry. So here I have some lentils, now you can use chickpeas, beans, whatever you have in your cupboard is totally grand. Now just pour this into your pie filling, and what this is gonna do, it's gonna weigh down the pastry as it bakes, so it'll stop it again from rising up. Perfect. So now what we want to do is just pop this into the fridge and chill it to stop the dough from shrinking as it bakes. just needs that little few more minutes to relax. What I like to do is actually pop it into the freezer for like 10-15 minutes and then you're golden. So my pastry dough was in the freezer for around 15 minutes, it's lovely and chilled and ready to be baked off. So you want to blind bake your crust at 375°F or 190°C for roughly around 15 minutes. Now you don't want to get it too brown because it will be baked off again later. So there you go, just a few minutes, our pastry is lightly browned. Now very carefully remove the lentils, remembering that they're hot. Now save those for the next time, put them in a jar, write beans for blind baking and then you always have them. And you can use them over and over again. So come here to me, I want to show you what you're looking for. You see the center of the base? It is lightly cooked, it's not colored, this is what we want. Perfect. Now, this is where the magic happens. I have my filling here ready to go, I'm gonna pour that in. As you can see it's a lot of filling, that's the way I like it. Make sure you get all your bacon-y cheesy bits in there. Okay lovely we're almost there, now our quiche is ready to be baked off. So now we're gonna bake our quiche off in a slightly lower temperature oven, 325 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 degrees Celsius for roughly 40 minutes. You want a slight jiggle in the middle, remember it is custard. So my timer just went off and my quiche is ready to come out of the oven. So check this bad boy out. As you can see it's lightly browned on top, it doesn't need that much color, eggs actually cook really quickly and once you take this out of the oven they will continue to cook so if there's a slight jiggle that is totally fine. Right now I'm just gonna set this aside, let it cool down completely and then we're gonna cut a nice big slice. So my quiche has set a little bit, it's cooled down, now I'm gonna cut myself a nice big slice. There you go, you see all that lovely filling and the savory custard there in the middle, also a nice thick layer of pastry, that is the kind of quiche that I like. I mean seriously. So when I went to school and did home economics, this is one of the first things you learned how to make. And it's such a classic dish, I mean pastry, and this lovely savory custard in the middle with bacon and cheese, it doesn't get much better than this. So if you make it, rate it on my website, I'd love to know what you think. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.