3 Pates in 1 Single Day – Sucree, Breton…& Foncer

Friday may have been the last day of class, but there’s never any slacking off at the San Francisco Baking Institute.  (seriously.)

On the calendar for Day 5:  Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart, Quiche, Strawberry Breton Tart and Tarte Bourdaloue.

Yes, that’s 4 “tarts” from 3 doughs — no time for dilly-dallying.

The pâte à foncer formed the base for our quiche.  A rich dough that uses pastry flour, milk, yolks and butter.  It’s French, so you expect butter — but in this case we have 75% of the flour weight in butter.  That’s 3 parts butter to 4 parts flour, folks.  Tasty…indeed.  I made grilled chicken club quiches, with bacon and cheddar.

The Tarte Bourdaloue is a pâte sucrée shell, filled with raspberry purée, frangipane and pears.  The sucrée contains all purpose flour, almond meal, powdered sugar, 45% butter and 34% of the flour weight in egg yolks.  It seems we’re getting richer as we go…

The sable Breton was the biggest surprise of the day (for me, at least).  It is a crumbly, crispy dough that forms the perfect base for a light fruit tart.  We used pistachio cream, strawberries and apricot glaze.  I loved this dough!  Thirty percent yolks, 70% sugar, 75% butter and a little baking powder combine with pastry flour to make what is, essentially, a crazy-rich sugar cookie.

The Creamy Chocolate Tart with Salted Caramel is a blind-baked chocolate pâte sucrée, filled with a salted caramel sauce and dark chocolate crèmeux, and finished with a black chocolate glaze.  So much goodness in a 6″ tart…

And to top it off, my classmates all sang Happy Birthday to me — and the School presented me with this gorgeous Charlotte.  Thanks to everyone at the San Francisco Baking Institute, and all of my classmates.  I couldn’t have had a better day!