Spelt crust quiche with spinach, bacon and brie

Ingredients

100g spelt flour

50g cold diced butter

1 egg, beaten

Good pinch of salt

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C. Turn the oven on after your put your pastry in the tin. You need a 24cm base measurement fluted tart tin with removable base

In a food processor briefly blitz the flour, salt and butter until it resembles small lentil, you don’t need to do it until fine.  Add your egg and pulse just until it comes together, only 3-4 pulses. Take out and knead a couple of times till it forms a dough, add a  little more flour if needed and with a rolling pin, roll between 2 sheets of baking paper and form a circle, put in fridge for ½ an hour to rest. Take out and continue to roll until it is big enough to fit your tart tin, lightly grease. Take 1 piece of baking paper off and hold underneath the paper then quickly turn over and put your pastry into your tin, peel off the baking paper (use this same paper for your blind baking) trim the excess and use that to fill in any gaps.  Put back in the fridge to rest for 15 minutes. You need to blind bake so you can use rice or dried chickpeas or specialty blind baking beans. Put the baking paper that you peeled off your pastry back onto your pastry and fill the paper with your blind baking rice/beans. This is done to weigh the pastry down so it doesn’t rise, make sure there is an even layer. Bake for 10 minutes, then take out and take your rice and paper out, keep your rice for your next blind baking (you can’t reuse and cook the rice) Put the tart shell back in the oven to dry out for 3 minutes. When done the pastry should no longer be raw. Take out of the oven and set aside.

Your filling you can use whatever you like this one is ½ a red onion and 1 piece of middle bacon- both diced and cooked in a pan for 3 minutes. Set aside. I had some frozen spinach to use up, so use a 250g pack of frozen spinach.  Defrost and make sure you squeeze out the excess moisture. Place the onion, bacon and spinach on the bottom of your quiche shell. In a bowl add 5 eggs and 2 tbsp cream, you can leave the cream out if you prefer. Whisk with a little salt and pepper. Add 3 more eggs but don’t whisk, you want them to stay whole. Pour the egg mix over your quiche ingredients and then top with sliced tomato and 120g of sliced brie or camembert. You can use feta or buffalo mozzarella or any other cheese. Bake for 20 minutes until it is golden brown and the egg is pretty much set.