A paper-thin Alsatian crust spread with fresh cheese and cream, scattered with onion and smoky bacon, baked in a very hot oven until the edges char. The topping is full-fat ricotta blended with 14% sour cream, since fromage blanc isn't sold in Canadian supermarkets.
I'm Alsatian, so this one is personal: flammekueche is what we eat on a Friday or Saturday night, ordered by the board and shared down the table until nobody can move. Here, the topping and the oven both need a workaround, and neither is hard once you know it.
Dough, cream, onion, bacon, and nothing else
Flammekueche, "flame cake", comes from the villages of northern Alsace, where it went into the wood-fired bread oven. The base is plain dough rolled as thin as possible, spread with fromage blanc and crème fraîche, then scattered with raw onion and lardons. No cheese, no garlic, no mushrooms.
What goes on top when there's no fromage blanc?
Fromage blanc is the missing piece: Canadian supermarkets don't carry it. Ricotta alone is grainy and sour cream alone is runny, but blended 1:1 until smooth they spread like fromage blanc, taste tangy and hold up at 260°C (500°F).
The sour cream also stands in for the crème fraîche, so the whole topping is two tubs from the dairy case. Thick-cut smoked bacon, cut into thin batons, replaces the lardons.
Getting a home oven hot enough
Alsatian restaurants bake it at 350°C or more for a couple of minutes. A home oven tops out around 260°C (500°F), so the heat has to come from below: a baking steel or pizza stone preheated for 45 minutes. Without that stored heat, the crust stays pale and bready.
Making it in Canada
The 3 French ingredients, and what to buy for them in Canada.
Fromage blanc is soft, tangy and spoonable. Ricotta alone is grainy and sour cream alone is too runny; blended smooth they give the same body and tang, and they don't split at 260°C. Use full-fat ricotta: the light kind turns watery in the oven.
🛒 Full-fat ricotta is in the dairy case at every supermarket; Tre Stelle Traditional comes in a 280 g tub (Voilà by Sobeys). If you ever see fromage blanc or quark, use 125 g in place of the ricotta and keep the sour cream.
Crème fraîche épaisse→14% sour cream (already in the topping)
Sour cream has crème fraîche's tang with less fat (14% against 30–40%). Here it bakes for under 10 minutes, blended with ricotta, so it doesn't have time to split. With real crème fraîche in place of the sour cream, the topping gets richer and less sour.
🛒 Sealtest, Compliments (Sobeys) or Great Value (Walmart) 14% sour cream. Liberté 40% crème fraîche, 250 mL, if you see it: with the sour cream at Metro, IGA and Super C in Quebec, and at Sobeys elsewhere. Stock is patchy.
Lardons are batons of smoked pork belly. Thick-cut bacon cut crosswise into 5 mm batons crisps in the 7–10 minutes the tarte spends in the oven; thin bacon burns. Maple or brown-sugar bacon catches and turns bitter at this heat.
🛒 PC Dry-Cured Thick Cut Naturally Smoked (375 g, Loblaws and Superstore), Great Value Thick Sliced Naturally Smoked (375 g, Walmart) or Compliments Thick Cut Naturally Smoked (Sobeys). Skip PC Old-Fashioned Extra-Thick, which is maplewood-smoked. In Quebec, Metro sells Plaisirs Gastronomiques smoked lardons (200 g), also listed on Voilà by Sobeys.
Good to know: The one thing worth buying is a baking steel. DareBuilt makes a 14 × 16 in, ¼ in (6 mm) carbon-steel one in Canada, sold on Amazon.ca; measure your oven rack before you order.
Ready to cook?
Tarte Flambée
Flammekueche
A paper-thin Alsatian crust spread with fresh cheese and cream, scattered with onion and smoky bacon, baked in a very hot oven until the edges char. The topping is full-fat ricotta blended with 14% sour cream, since fromage blanc isn't sold in Canadian supermarkets.
Prep time
30 min
Cook time
20 min
Resting time
30 min
Total time
1 hr 20 min
Servings
4
Rest the dough for 30 minutes so it rolls out paper-thin without shrinking back.
Ingredients
Original recipe: 4 servings.
Instructions
Heat the steel. Put a baking steel or pizza stone on the top-third rack and heat the oven to its maximum, ideally 260°C (500°F), for at least 45 minutes.
Make the dough. Mix the flour, water, oil and salt until it comes together, then knead 3–4 minutes until smooth. Wrap and rest 30 minutes at room temperature.
Make the topping. Blend the ricotta and sour cream with a stick blender or whisk hard until completely smooth. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. It should spread like thick yogurt.
Roll it thin. Cut the dough in two. On a floured sheet of parchment, roll each half into a rectangle about 35 × 25 cm, as thin as you can, 1–2 mm.
Top it. Spread half the cream over each base, right to 1 cm from the edge, in a thin layer. Scatter over the onion and bacon. Don't pile it on.
Bake hot and fast. Slide one tarte, still on its parchment, onto the hot steel. Bake 7–10 minutes, until the edges are puffed and charred in spots and the bacon is sizzling. Repeat with the second.
Serve straight away. Grind over some pepper, cut into squares and eat right away, while the crust still crackles.
Notes
Make the dough up to a day ahead and keep it wrapped in the fridge. Bring it back to room temperature before rolling, or it fights back.
If the dough keeps shrinking as you roll, cover it and let it rest 10 minutes more: the gluten needs to relax.
Slice the onion as thin as you can, with a mandoline if you have one. It cooks only from the oven heat, and thick slices stay raw and crunchy.
For a gratinée version, add 60 g grated Gruyère or Emmental per tarte before baking.
No steel or stone? Heat an upside-down heavy baking sheet for 30 minutes and bake on that; the crust will be a little softer.
Course: Mains · Cuisine: French · Adapted for Canadian kitchens
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