Flammekueche


Flammekueche, , or tarte flambée, is a speciality of the region of Alsace, German-speaking Moselle, Baden and the Palatinate. It is composed of bread dough rolled out very thinly in the shape of a rectangle or oval, which is covered with fromage blanc or crème fraîche, thinly sliced onions and lardons.
The name of the dish varies in local dialects: it is called Flàmmeküeche, or Flàmmaküacha in Alsatian, or Flammkuche in Lorraine Franconian ''. All these names translate as " baked in the flames". In Alsace, the French name tarte flambée is the most common name for the dish, while it is known as its Alsatian name "flammekueche" in the rest of France. Contrary to what literal translation would suggest, 'tarte flambée' is not flambéed, but cooked in a wood-fired oven.

Varieties

There are many variations of the original recipe in terms of the garniture. The standard variations are:
The dish was created by farmers from Alsace, in the Kochersberg, who used to bake bread once a week. The Flammekueche was originally a homemade dish which did not make its urban restaurant debut until the "pizza craze" of the 1960s. A Flammekueche would be used to test the heat of the farmers' wood-fired ovens. At the peak of its temperature, the oven would also have the ideal conditions in which to bake a Flammekueche. The embers would be pushed aside to make room for the cake in the middle of the oven, and the intense heat would be able to bake it in one or two minutes. The crust that forms the border of the Flammekueche would be nearly burned by the flames. The result resembles a thin pizza. The Alsatian term is the original, much older one, having been used by peasants for centuries before being calqued into French as tarte flambée in an 1894 cookbook.