Manton
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Day 8: Tarts
Tarts. More pastries. More pain.
This was, for me, the toughest day yet. Partly it was because I have a cold; not terrible, but enough to slow me down. Partly it was my utter unfamiliarity with the subject matter. As I noted last week, the class moves very fast. Something is explained and demoed, and then you do it, immediately, whether you have ever done it before or not. True, you should have read your text before hand, and that helps, a little, but not enough. You can know the recipe by heart, but technique is all about the senses, particularly the hands. You need to know how something is supposed to look and smell and feel, and you need to know how to make it so. Reading all the books in the world won’t teach your hands how to accomplish that.
I did reasonably well up until pastries because I knew something – even it if was only a little – about all the things we were covering. Pastries was totally knew to me, and I struggled.
For this class, we made only three things, all tarts: an onion tart, a quiche Lorraine, and an apple tart. The definition of tart is essentially any open-faced pastry pie. If there is crust on the bottom (and possibly the sides, but this is not required) but not on the top, then it is a tart. It doesn’t matter what you fill it with. Tarts are most commonly thought of as desserts, but they can be anything.
I was excited to make the onion tart. There used to be a restaurant near me – not very good and always empty – that served a great onion tart. It was the only truly good thing they had. It took forever for them to make. Now I know why. Anyway, the place closed.
We learned three kinds of dough, or really two, but one with two variations. The first was pâte brisee. This is a plain dough that can be made with or without eggs. Chef was not terribly clear on what the difference was, and said they were basically interchangeable. I found the version with egg easier to roll out, but that could be because I just screwed it up less in the making. Pâte sucrÃ
e is almost the same, except it has a lot of sugar. This is a dessert crust.
The first thing we did is make the three kinds of dough. We got the admonition again about measuring out everything carefully. No margin for error or correction in pastries. The basic ratio for all these pastries is 2 parts flour one part butter. No matter what, that always holds. Then you add a tiny amount of salt and some liquid. The liquid can either be water or egg. Add sugar, and you have a sucrÃ
e.
Take your flour and sift it onto a large table. Sifting is important, Chef insisted, because there is no other way to be certain that you catch any little chunks. Those chucks will not incorporate smoothly into dough. They will stay as lumps. Bad.
Then you dump in your butter. It MUST be cold. Soft or melted butter won’t incorporate with the flour properly. Then you sort of whack at the butter and flour with a mixer, essentially a flat blade-life thingy. The one in our kit is plastic. Chef’s was metal and had a wood handle. It worked a lot better. You can also do this step with your hands, but you have to be careful, because body heat will melt the butter. The danger is that the dough will become “overworked”: hard, inelastic, and too small. You are going for the consistency of wet sand.
Once you have that you arrange the dough in a circle with an empty space or “well” in the center. That’s where you add your water and/or egg (beaten). Then slowly swirl the liquid in with a finger. Then mold the dough into a ball. It will stick like crazy to your hands, especially if you used egg. You need to have a bowl of flour handy to coat your hands. This will make everything stick a bit less. Also, if you rub your hands together with the flour, most of the dough will come off.
Once you have a ball, you use that to pick up every stray bit of flour that you can, just by mashing the ball down onto them. Then you do something called fraiser. Take a small piece and mash it with your palm, spreading it out across the surface of the table like a streaky smudge. This is to make sure you have smashed out all globs and have dough of even consistency. Then scrape it up with your flat blade thingy, and set aside. DO NOT make into a ball yet. Keep doing that until you have worked through all the dough, then form the dough into a flat disk.
Flour and little flecks of dough, and God knows what else, tend to get everywhere during this process. Chef kept admonishing us to keep our stations clean, but I found it to be a real pain. At one point he even brought up the floors, to make sure we didn’t let anything fall at our feet. I looked at the stations around me, and everybody else’s floor space was clean. Mine was a mess. I actually stopped to clean up the floor with a wet towel. I had to do it more than once.
Chef gave us barely 30 minutes to make three doughs. Nobody finished in time. A couple of people had to start over on some of theirs. I didn’t, but Chef said that one of mine – the brisee, no egg, was too soft and would need some extra flour when I rolled it out.
Dough has to be refrigerated before it can be rolled out. This helps the butter re-harden, among other things. While we waited, we prepped the fillings.
For the onion tart, it’s just a lot of onion emancer and some bacon. For the quiche, it’s bacon and grated gruyere. For both of these, there is also a custard: One whole egg, one yolk, milk, and cream whipped together and seasoned with salt, pepper & nutmeg. Chef later said that the classic way to make onion tart has no custard. But custard is essential for quiche. For the apple tart, you need apple compote.
The onions were easy. Brown some bacon, the remove. Caramelize the onions. They were probably in the pan for a good 20 minutes. Once cooked, set on an ice bath and set aside.
For the quiche, the bacon is blanched three times. The other ingredients are added raw.
The apple compote is four peeled apples, either cut into quarters or small chunks, and then sweated with butter, water, sugar and a cartouche until mushy soft. If you leave the apples in large pieces, you have to put the compost through a food mill later. I did this and wish I had not. It did not go through the mill easily, and most had to be scooped out with a spoon. If you cut the apples into small chunks before you cook them, they will be easy enough to mash into paste with a fork.
Did you know that there is a “correct” way to peel an apple? There is! Chef showed us, and then went around rebuking us for doing it wrong. You take your peeler and remove a circle around the stem, then go down the side of the apple, then remove another circle at the base. All in one motion, by the way. Then rotate the apple in your hand, removing the sides one strip at a time. “I don’t wanna see this” – Chef made a bunch of frantic gestures with the peeler – “that is incorrect!” I wondered what it mattered. I suppose doing it his way is faster and more efficient if you can do it well, but does it affect the product? In any case, I did it his way.
The apples to be cut up and made into compote you just core with a paring knife. Once it’s quartered, that’s easy. If you are not going to cook the apple right away, take a lemon, roll it on a hard surface, cut it in half, and rub lemon juice in the apple. This prevents oxidization and gives a hint of acidity to the tart.
The custards, I have described. Very simple.
Next, Chef demoed how to roll the dough. First, take it out of the fridge and let it rest at room temp for at least 15 minutes. Straight out of the fridge it will be too hard. Then dust your work area with flour. Spread some flour on the top of your dough. Then uses a rolling pin to gently roll it out. You want to roll, not push. The rolling pins at the FCI, by the way, did not have handles joined by an axle. They were just plain wood cylinders. Anyway, the flour on the surface prevents sticking. But even with it, if you press too hard, the dough will stick anyway.
Chef rolled his dough into a perfect circle, 1/8” thick. Easy. Right?
Not for me. My first dough cracked at the edges. I am not sure what did it. Chef said I pressed with the pin too hard. Or maybe the dough did not have enough liquid in it. Whatever the cause, it made the next steps harder.
The tarts were to be baked in a flan ring and steel pan. The ring is just that: a ring, that sets the side of the tart. You butter the surface of the pan and the inside of the ring – any surface that will touch dough. The ring goes on the pan and does not quite reach the pan’s outer edge. When your dough is rolled out, you lay it flat on top of the ring. Then take a piece of excess dough, squish it into ball, and use that to press the dough inside the ring down into the corner where the ring meets the plate. That sets your edge. DON’T touch the tart dough with your fingers.
When that is done, then you take some of the excess hanging out over the sides and hike it up and toward the inside. It is important to do this delicately and evenly. If you tear, break, or smush the dough too thin, you will weaken the sides to the point that they may not hold. Basically, if at any point you can see black (or whatever is the color of the metal of the pan and ring) the dough is too thin. Evenly is also important. You want about a half inch overlap inside the ring.
When that is done, take the roller and roll it across the top of the ring in two directions, like a cross. That should shear off the outer, excess dough neatly. Discard that.
Now, for the apple tart we made a decoration. You take that excess above and inside the ring, and fold it up, making little dimples with your fingers. It sort of looks like a sprocket, only prettier. Chef said to do this only for the apple tart, but I don’t see why it could not be done for all of them. I suppose it is not traditional for savory tarts.
Poke the bottom of the dough with a fork all over. For a pâte sucrÃ
e, you have to refrigerate the dough before you bake it. For the others, you don’t.
But I don’t think Chef made that exactly clear. He certainly thought he had. He got his most exasperated ever at us yesterday. He felt that he had explained very clearly which steps had to be done to which dough, and yet we kept doing the wrong steps for the wrong dough and – worse – asking a lot of stupid question. He really did yell at one point, not at anyone in particular, but at all of us collectively. I think what confused us is that he demoed certain steps using the sucrÃ
e that were not necessary for that dough.
Anyway, for the brisee, we had to do what’s called blind baking. Once the shell is made (and it does not need to be refrigerated, I learned the hard way!), you cover the inside with plastic wrap, then fill the entire tart with dried beans. These provide weight to keep the dough flush against the metal, without bubbling and standing off. Close up the plastic wrap and bake at 400 for about ten minutes. Amazingly, the plastic does not melt. You just lift the whole bag of beans out, and then cook the dough for another few minutes empty. Doing this dries it out thoroughly. This is essential for any tart that will have liquid inside. If you don’t do this, the liquid will get into the dough and make it soggy. But if the dough is cooked first, it will resist the liquid and just act as a shell, as it should.
The first one I made was the apple. You spread the cooked compote evenly in the tart. It should not full up the entire thing; there needs to be room up top for a layer of apple slices. Then you take two apples and peel them and core them with a corer (Chef had one of these, thankfully; our kits don’t). Then half them, and use your paring knife to slice into thin, even slices. Arrange those in a circle, with lots of overlap per slice, all the way around. Then repeat in the center. Or better yet, make a flower design. Brush the apple slices with melted butter, sprinkle with sugar and bake at 400 for about one hour.
It’s important to keep an eye on the tart and move it around. Chef suggested that we start by pushing it way in the back of the oven where it’s hottest, then turn it every 5-10 minutes to make it brown evenly, then when it was browned all the way, move it to the front of the oven to cook the rest of the way, also turning frequently.
When the apple tart is done, you paint the top with an apricot glaze.
For the onion tart, you just spoon in the onions and the bacon and then fill with custard. Be careful not to overflow – which I did. Cook it the same way, but it only takes 10-15 minutes total. When the liquid is solidified and the filling jiggles but is not runny, the tart is cooked.
For the quiche, you drop in the blanched bacon, then spread around the cheese, then fill in with custard. Cook the same way as the onion tart.
Here they all are:
Here is Chef's apple tart. Look how much browner it is.
But he told me mine was done, and to take it out. I asked how he knew and why two fully cooked tarts could be such different colors, and I did not get an answer that I fully understood. Basically, he said that a tart is cooked when the apples were cooked, and that the apple is cooked when a paring knife slides in easily and does not press down. But how he could tell that by sight I have no idea.
Sorry I did not take more pics as class went on. At first, I just forgot as the crush of work got to me. Chef kept barking over and over that we were way behind, and all I could think about was catching up. Then by the time I realized that I had so few pictures, my hands were such a mess that I feared I would mess up the camera, getting flour into its guts, if I handled it. And I didn’t think I had time to wash my hands at every stage. So I just gave up and waited to take pics of the finished products.
Tarts. More pastries. More pain.
This was, for me, the toughest day yet. Partly it was because I have a cold; not terrible, but enough to slow me down. Partly it was my utter unfamiliarity with the subject matter. As I noted last week, the class moves very fast. Something is explained and demoed, and then you do it, immediately, whether you have ever done it before or not. True, you should have read your text before hand, and that helps, a little, but not enough. You can know the recipe by heart, but technique is all about the senses, particularly the hands. You need to know how something is supposed to look and smell and feel, and you need to know how to make it so. Reading all the books in the world won’t teach your hands how to accomplish that.
I did reasonably well up until pastries because I knew something – even it if was only a little – about all the things we were covering. Pastries was totally knew to me, and I struggled.
For this class, we made only three things, all tarts: an onion tart, a quiche Lorraine, and an apple tart. The definition of tart is essentially any open-faced pastry pie. If there is crust on the bottom (and possibly the sides, but this is not required) but not on the top, then it is a tart. It doesn’t matter what you fill it with. Tarts are most commonly thought of as desserts, but they can be anything.
I was excited to make the onion tart. There used to be a restaurant near me – not very good and always empty – that served a great onion tart. It was the only truly good thing they had. It took forever for them to make. Now I know why. Anyway, the place closed.
We learned three kinds of dough, or really two, but one with two variations. The first was pâte brisee. This is a plain dough that can be made with or without eggs. Chef was not terribly clear on what the difference was, and said they were basically interchangeable. I found the version with egg easier to roll out, but that could be because I just screwed it up less in the making. Pâte sucrÃ
The first thing we did is make the three kinds of dough. We got the admonition again about measuring out everything carefully. No margin for error or correction in pastries. The basic ratio for all these pastries is 2 parts flour one part butter. No matter what, that always holds. Then you add a tiny amount of salt and some liquid. The liquid can either be water or egg. Add sugar, and you have a sucrÃ
Take your flour and sift it onto a large table. Sifting is important, Chef insisted, because there is no other way to be certain that you catch any little chunks. Those chucks will not incorporate smoothly into dough. They will stay as lumps. Bad.
Then you dump in your butter. It MUST be cold. Soft or melted butter won’t incorporate with the flour properly. Then you sort of whack at the butter and flour with a mixer, essentially a flat blade-life thingy. The one in our kit is plastic. Chef’s was metal and had a wood handle. It worked a lot better. You can also do this step with your hands, but you have to be careful, because body heat will melt the butter. The danger is that the dough will become “overworked”: hard, inelastic, and too small. You are going for the consistency of wet sand.
Once you have that you arrange the dough in a circle with an empty space or “well” in the center. That’s where you add your water and/or egg (beaten). Then slowly swirl the liquid in with a finger. Then mold the dough into a ball. It will stick like crazy to your hands, especially if you used egg. You need to have a bowl of flour handy to coat your hands. This will make everything stick a bit less. Also, if you rub your hands together with the flour, most of the dough will come off.
Once you have a ball, you use that to pick up every stray bit of flour that you can, just by mashing the ball down onto them. Then you do something called fraiser. Take a small piece and mash it with your palm, spreading it out across the surface of the table like a streaky smudge. This is to make sure you have smashed out all globs and have dough of even consistency. Then scrape it up with your flat blade thingy, and set aside. DO NOT make into a ball yet. Keep doing that until you have worked through all the dough, then form the dough into a flat disk.
Flour and little flecks of dough, and God knows what else, tend to get everywhere during this process. Chef kept admonishing us to keep our stations clean, but I found it to be a real pain. At one point he even brought up the floors, to make sure we didn’t let anything fall at our feet. I looked at the stations around me, and everybody else’s floor space was clean. Mine was a mess. I actually stopped to clean up the floor with a wet towel. I had to do it more than once.
Chef gave us barely 30 minutes to make three doughs. Nobody finished in time. A couple of people had to start over on some of theirs. I didn’t, but Chef said that one of mine – the brisee, no egg, was too soft and would need some extra flour when I rolled it out.
Dough has to be refrigerated before it can be rolled out. This helps the butter re-harden, among other things. While we waited, we prepped the fillings.
For the onion tart, it’s just a lot of onion emancer and some bacon. For the quiche, it’s bacon and grated gruyere. For both of these, there is also a custard: One whole egg, one yolk, milk, and cream whipped together and seasoned with salt, pepper & nutmeg. Chef later said that the classic way to make onion tart has no custard. But custard is essential for quiche. For the apple tart, you need apple compote.
The onions were easy. Brown some bacon, the remove. Caramelize the onions. They were probably in the pan for a good 20 minutes. Once cooked, set on an ice bath and set aside.
For the quiche, the bacon is blanched three times. The other ingredients are added raw.
The apple compote is four peeled apples, either cut into quarters or small chunks, and then sweated with butter, water, sugar and a cartouche until mushy soft. If you leave the apples in large pieces, you have to put the compost through a food mill later. I did this and wish I had not. It did not go through the mill easily, and most had to be scooped out with a spoon. If you cut the apples into small chunks before you cook them, they will be easy enough to mash into paste with a fork.
Did you know that there is a “correct” way to peel an apple? There is! Chef showed us, and then went around rebuking us for doing it wrong. You take your peeler and remove a circle around the stem, then go down the side of the apple, then remove another circle at the base. All in one motion, by the way. Then rotate the apple in your hand, removing the sides one strip at a time. “I don’t wanna see this” – Chef made a bunch of frantic gestures with the peeler – “that is incorrect!” I wondered what it mattered. I suppose doing it his way is faster and more efficient if you can do it well, but does it affect the product? In any case, I did it his way.
The apples to be cut up and made into compote you just core with a paring knife. Once it’s quartered, that’s easy. If you are not going to cook the apple right away, take a lemon, roll it on a hard surface, cut it in half, and rub lemon juice in the apple. This prevents oxidization and gives a hint of acidity to the tart.
The custards, I have described. Very simple.
Next, Chef demoed how to roll the dough. First, take it out of the fridge and let it rest at room temp for at least 15 minutes. Straight out of the fridge it will be too hard. Then dust your work area with flour. Spread some flour on the top of your dough. Then uses a rolling pin to gently roll it out. You want to roll, not push. The rolling pins at the FCI, by the way, did not have handles joined by an axle. They were just plain wood cylinders. Anyway, the flour on the surface prevents sticking. But even with it, if you press too hard, the dough will stick anyway.
Chef rolled his dough into a perfect circle, 1/8” thick. Easy. Right?
Not for me. My first dough cracked at the edges. I am not sure what did it. Chef said I pressed with the pin too hard. Or maybe the dough did not have enough liquid in it. Whatever the cause, it made the next steps harder.
The tarts were to be baked in a flan ring and steel pan. The ring is just that: a ring, that sets the side of the tart. You butter the surface of the pan and the inside of the ring – any surface that will touch dough. The ring goes on the pan and does not quite reach the pan’s outer edge. When your dough is rolled out, you lay it flat on top of the ring. Then take a piece of excess dough, squish it into ball, and use that to press the dough inside the ring down into the corner where the ring meets the plate. That sets your edge. DON’T touch the tart dough with your fingers.
When that is done, then you take some of the excess hanging out over the sides and hike it up and toward the inside. It is important to do this delicately and evenly. If you tear, break, or smush the dough too thin, you will weaken the sides to the point that they may not hold. Basically, if at any point you can see black (or whatever is the color of the metal of the pan and ring) the dough is too thin. Evenly is also important. You want about a half inch overlap inside the ring.
When that is done, take the roller and roll it across the top of the ring in two directions, like a cross. That should shear off the outer, excess dough neatly. Discard that.
Now, for the apple tart we made a decoration. You take that excess above and inside the ring, and fold it up, making little dimples with your fingers. It sort of looks like a sprocket, only prettier. Chef said to do this only for the apple tart, but I don’t see why it could not be done for all of them. I suppose it is not traditional for savory tarts.
Poke the bottom of the dough with a fork all over. For a pâte sucrÃ
But I don’t think Chef made that exactly clear. He certainly thought he had. He got his most exasperated ever at us yesterday. He felt that he had explained very clearly which steps had to be done to which dough, and yet we kept doing the wrong steps for the wrong dough and – worse – asking a lot of stupid question. He really did yell at one point, not at anyone in particular, but at all of us collectively. I think what confused us is that he demoed certain steps using the sucrÃ
Anyway, for the brisee, we had to do what’s called blind baking. Once the shell is made (and it does not need to be refrigerated, I learned the hard way!), you cover the inside with plastic wrap, then fill the entire tart with dried beans. These provide weight to keep the dough flush against the metal, without bubbling and standing off. Close up the plastic wrap and bake at 400 for about ten minutes. Amazingly, the plastic does not melt. You just lift the whole bag of beans out, and then cook the dough for another few minutes empty. Doing this dries it out thoroughly. This is essential for any tart that will have liquid inside. If you don’t do this, the liquid will get into the dough and make it soggy. But if the dough is cooked first, it will resist the liquid and just act as a shell, as it should.
The first one I made was the apple. You spread the cooked compote evenly in the tart. It should not full up the entire thing; there needs to be room up top for a layer of apple slices. Then you take two apples and peel them and core them with a corer (Chef had one of these, thankfully; our kits don’t). Then half them, and use your paring knife to slice into thin, even slices. Arrange those in a circle, with lots of overlap per slice, all the way around. Then repeat in the center. Or better yet, make a flower design. Brush the apple slices with melted butter, sprinkle with sugar and bake at 400 for about one hour.
It’s important to keep an eye on the tart and move it around. Chef suggested that we start by pushing it way in the back of the oven where it’s hottest, then turn it every 5-10 minutes to make it brown evenly, then when it was browned all the way, move it to the front of the oven to cook the rest of the way, also turning frequently.
When the apple tart is done, you paint the top with an apricot glaze.
For the onion tart, you just spoon in the onions and the bacon and then fill with custard. Be careful not to overflow – which I did. Cook it the same way, but it only takes 10-15 minutes total. When the liquid is solidified and the filling jiggles but is not runny, the tart is cooked.
For the quiche, you drop in the blanched bacon, then spread around the cheese, then fill in with custard. Cook the same way as the onion tart.
Here they all are:
Here is Chef's apple tart. Look how much browner it is.
But he told me mine was done, and to take it out. I asked how he knew and why two fully cooked tarts could be such different colors, and I did not get an answer that I fully understood. Basically, he said that a tart is cooked when the apples were cooked, and that the apple is cooked when a paring knife slides in easily and does not press down. But how he could tell that by sight I have no idea.
Sorry I did not take more pics as class went on. At first, I just forgot as the crush of work got to me. Chef kept barking over and over that we were way behind, and all I could think about was catching up. Then by the time I realized that I had so few pictures, my hands were such a mess that I feared I would mess up the camera, getting flour into its guts, if I handled it. And I didn’t think I had time to wash my hands at every stage. So I just gave up and waited to take pics of the finished products.
![lol8[1].gif](https://www.styleforum.net/images/smilies/lol8[1].gif)
