Flammekueche

Flammekueche — also called tarte flambee — is a specialty of Alsace, in the Upper Rhine valley, and of neighboring Baden. The name in Alsatian dialect means pie or cake baked in the flames. It originated in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century as a baker's test dish: wood-fired bread ovens were heated to a very high temperature before the weekly bake, and bakers used a thin flat dough — topped with whatever was to hand — to gauge whether the oven had reached the right heat. The very hot oven cooked the thin dough in minutes, blistering and crisping it. What began as a test became a meal in its own right, traditionally shared at the table, rolled and sliced.

A flammekueche arrives blistered and charred at the edges, the crust thin and crackling, the topping a thin film of creme fraiche studded with soft, sweet onions and salty nubs of bacon. Eaten hot, often rolled and cut into slices, the contrast is between the blistered crust and the creamy, savory topping. Traditionally shared from a single large flatbread at the table.

Flammekueche rests on two mechanisms: a very thin dough and a very hot oven. The dough is a lean bread dough — flour, water, salt, yeast, a little oil — rolled paper-thin; the thinness is what allows the high-heat bake to cook it in minutes rather than the hour a thick loaf requires. The traditional wood-fired oven reaches temperatures far above those of a domestic oven, blistering the dough's surface and charring the edges before the interior can dry out — the very test the original bakers used to gauge oven readiness. The topping — creme fraiche, sliced onions, lardons — cooks in those same minutes; the onions soften and sweeten rather than caramelize, the creme fraiche thickens but does not split, and the lardons render their fat into the cream.