Deep Dish Einkorn Quiche
Quiche is a fairly easy dish to make, and very customizable. I am not a French purist, and I have made many different versions of quiche at home. This one of many popular versions.
For ease on the digestive system, I use a 4 ingredient dough made with einkorn, and make the filling with nut or oat milk. Sheep cheese is optional. Add to it the southern French flair from Olive oil, thyme and rosemary! Bon appetit !
Are they dishes you can buy already made for you that you wish you could make yourself?
Dishes like quiche, pizza, roasted chicken, mac & cheese , that are crowd pleasers are also often easy to make! I like the convenience to be able to buy if I run out of time when going to a friend’s pot luck, but I love most what I make at home. The flavors are incomparable.
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Quiche s’il vous plaît
Quiche is a fairly easy dish to make, and very customizable. I am not a French purist, and I have made many different versions of quiche at home. This one of many popular versions.
Over the years I noticed that my digestive system did not enjoy cow’s dairy, so I replaced it wherever I could, i.e. replaced butter with some coconut or extra virgin olive oil (even in cakes), coconut cream or milk, and started restricting my consumption of cheese to goat and sheep cheeses. That has worked well!
Of course the flavors are not the same, but the food is still flavorful and as a bonus, is easy on the stomach.
Ancient and whole ingredients
4 Ingredients Einkorn Dough
My quiches are neither gluten nor dairy free. However, their main ingredient is an ancient grain. Einkorn, one of the most ancient grains, is low in gluten and more nutrient dense than conventional wheat. My quiche dough only contain only 4 ingredients and no filler: einkorn flour, olive oil, salt and water. That’s it.
To learn about einkorn, read my post Pause the Pizza, Try a Tomato Tarte!
Want to grind your own einkorn flour? First get your grain in bulk at Azure Standard and use my discount link here. If you need recommendation for a grinder, I recently upgraded from my Kitchen Aid grinder to Nutrimill Harvest and can only recommend ! Since I use it a lot for my recipes, I asked to become an affiliate so I can recommended it with a discount ! Use this link to look into it and the code SCL20 for $20 off!
Nut Milk
The flesh or filling of the quiche is almond milk based, and you can make with your own almonds or buy in store. I find that the tastiest version of nut milk I make is home blended hazelnut milk. However, hazelnuts are pricier and harder to come by, so I usually make it with almond milk.To compensate for the cream I just add more eggs, and sprinkle some hard sheep cheese on top.
There is not much cheese so cheese-less is totally possible if you want to go completely cow’s dairy free! By “Dairy” I mean, animal milk-derived products free! I do not, unlike Americans, include eggs in this category. Perhaps it’s my French still having a hard time with this word, since we French usually separate eggs from the “milk products” category.
If you can’t do nut milk, consider oat milk !
Herbs and Spices Add Much Flavors!
I am faithful to my habit of using herbs in everything I cook. So, as a southern French I never fail to use thyme or rosemary or herbs de Provence, and extra virgin olive oil, so my recipes definitely have a Mediterranean flair about them.
Interested in VERY GOOD spice and herbs brands? Herbs lovers if you like using herbs and spices a lot INVEST in Frontier Coop bulk herbs, you will love them! They have different volumes like jars, 6 oz jars and pounds bags and none of the ones I bought nor their teas ever disappointed! There at least ten of them I buy in pound bags (here, Thyme), even if it takes me a few years to finish they are real good products.
Tools
This is a little-tools-needed recipes. You will need a mixing bowl or two, cups and spoon measurers, wooden spoons, a pyrex mold, and a steam cooker.
Important: do NOT use a pressure cooker to make the recipes I make with a steam cooker ! To learn about the difference between a pressure cooker and cooking with a (gentle) steam cooker, read my post on How Do I Steam Eggs !
Vitaliseur steam cooker
As usual, I use my steam cooker to precook vegetables a few minutes before I season and mix them together and add into the quiche. It precooks and cleanses the ingredients and speeds the process. Interested in the Vitaliseur steam cooker? Use low caps “steamedcuisine” and get 10¨% off from the US / Canada. Price includes VAT which is cancelled at checked out but replaced with an international shipping fee. French and European readers can contact me by email and I will send them a different code (bernadette@steamedcuisinelifestyle.com).
Note that as of now, I am no affiliate of the Vitaliseur company, I am only considered “prescriber” and earn a free steam cooker if enough people buy some with my code! I am freely promoting a cooking tool I LOVE!
Deep Dish Pyrex Mold
If you are using a traditional quiche shape mold, you may need 2 dishes and more dough! – let’s test it!
The “Deep Dish” Quiche:
As for myself, I like a larger (10 x 15 inches) and deeper ( 2 inches) ceramic or pyrex dish because you get more “flesh”, and the flesh is softer and contains more vegetables . The flesh is not creamy because I don’t add cream, it is lighter, and I add more eggs and cheese instead. The result is an easy to digest yet filling dish, to serve with a side of salad greens.
This size is also a great family size ( enough for 2 adults and 4 little kids), although now that the mouth of our family of 7 are getting hungrier, I may have to make an additional half quiche too !
Parchment Paper:
If you use a pyrex dish, the dough will probably stick and be hard to remove without breaking the quiche. I recommend using some unbleached parchment paper under ! Removing the quiche from the dish will be flawless and washing the dishes easier.
Using Steam cooker as an ally
As I mentioned above, I use my steam cooker to precook some ingredients, including ham. It precooks very quickly! Then I mix and season ingredients and throw them onto the dough on the dish before pouring the egg and almond milk mix.
Why steam the ham?
Well Pigs are not the cleanest animals generally speaking. This is the reason some world religions prohibit their consumption ! Another factor is the way animal are raised in conventional agriculture. While the places I shop at usually sell antibiotics and hormone free hams, these are usually not the pasture raised kind. Like many of you, I can’t afford al the best foods, which is why I am so glad to have this cooking tool that cleanses part of the toxins out of my ingredients. Also, pork contains lots of saturated fats and the steam cooker is great as sweating some extra ones out of the meat. Save yourself some inflammatory fats.
Avoid Inflammatory Fats from Inflammatorily Fed Animals
As a rule, I am not against saturated fat as they are very satisfactory and filling, more so than carbs. However, animal fats are more inflammatory than cold pressed vegetable fats (stress on cold pressed!)
What I say is mostly valid for conventionally raised meat fed grains, corn and soy. Such foods are not the foods animals would naturally eat on their own. Besides, they are inflammatory foods i.e. foods our bodies have an immune reaction against. Therefore we can assume that eating meat of animal fed this way will have an inflammatory impact on us. I am not even going into the conditions in which animals are raised. After all, you are what you eat!
Now if the ham you buy is the cheapest out there and the only one you can afford, no judgement here! We all are on a budget to some degree! Yes PLEASE, do steam it for a few minutes, give the ham a sauna sweat session and save yourself as many toxins as you can !
Cleansing Pepperoni
I have gone so far as steaming some pepperoni ( processed food if there is any, but my kids love them on pizza! ) in my steam cooker ! It is always fascinating to see so much fats and red color sweating out into the tank. And the result? The pepperoni tasted the same, if not better after the steam bath! Some days I wish I could afford a study on the contents of tank water after cooking, to see what I am NOT subjecting my body to…
Steam the vegetables
Now that one is obvious: you can steam the vegetables for a very short time ( 3 minutes, 2 for the leek). This is easy, and takes only heating the steam cooker with water (5-7 minutes) and steaming for 3 minutes while you make the dough. Steaming the vegetables has an advantage: it cleanses them out and preserves the nutrients, which are ready to mix in the quiche dish with other ingredients. Want to know more about steaming vegetables and what advantages are? Check my post How do I steam Vegetables? as well as my youtube video on steaming food, including steaming vegetables.
Steam the quiche?
Have used wheat to make cakes I cooked in the steam cooker, but never did a pie in there. For one thing, it does cook the dough but does not really harden it, which defeats the purpose of quiche. SO I still cook in the oven. What I have tried though is crustless quiche and although the consistency is different it is quite delicious too ! I will post a recipe soon!
Enroll Your kids !
Quiche and pizza are some of the dishes I make mainly for my kids, as they LOVE it. What they also love is the helping opportunity, each will pick a vegetable to cut for me and their little clumsy hands will cut too big, or too small, or too much, but we haven’t yet eaten a bad quiche even like that. Important is to take their contribution as is, so they are proud of being a helper, and for sure they will eat it!
Meanwhile enjoy this adapted classic recipe! Bon appétit!
Deep Dish Quiche
Quiche is a fairly easy dish to make, and very customizable. I am not a French purist, and I have made many different versions of quiche at home. This one of many popular versions.
For ease on the digestive system, I use a 4 ingredient dough made with einkorn, and make the filling with nut or oat milk. Sheep cheese is optional. Add to it the southern French flair from Olive oil, thyme and rosemary! Bon appetit !
Ingredients
Dough:
- 2 1.2 cup of whole einkorn flour
- (optional ½ cup discard )
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp grey salt
- Optional: 1/2 tsp rosemary powder or thyme, gives a great flavor to the dough
Liquid Filling
- 6 eggs
- 2 1/2 to 3 cup nut milk of your choice
- 1/2 tsp thyme
- 1 tsp grey sea salt
Ingredients in the liquid filling:
- 8 oz of bella mushrooms
- Half to a whole leek, sliced
- Half a pepper, diced
- One shallot, diced
- 6 thick slices of ham
- Organic thyme, 1 tbsp
- Two handfuls of Pecorino Romano (hard sheep cheese), grated
- Optional: Add a few bites of steamed broccoli ( steamed 3 minutes) or finely cut kale ( steamed 1 minute only)
Instructions
- Make the dough In a bowl, add flour and salt. If you are using sourdough discard, add the discard into a separate bowl and pour the lukewarm water into it. Mix it until dissolved.
- Pour the discard mixture or the water into the flour, add the oil and mix with a wooden
spoon until you have a dough ball. The ball should be too sticky. Einkorn slowly absorbs water, so don't be surprised if you need to add a bit of flour. - Cover with a plate while making the filling. Have it rest 15 min before checking if all the
flour was absorbed, as einkorn absorbs water slower. - Filling: Turn on the steam cooker with around 1 inches of water in the bottom pot ( No need to have more as these are the only ingredients you will cook for 3 minutes)
- Cut the vegetables or have your helpers do it, under supervision. One kid cuts the mushrooms, one cuts the leek, one cuts the ham in ½ inch pieces or like pancetta pieces.
- Transfer into the basket of the steam cooker once the cooker steams abundantly . Cook all together for 3 minutes.
- While steaming vegetables and ham, in a mixing bowl add 3 tbsp approx. of olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp of kosher salt, ½ tbsp of thyme or herbes de provence. After 3 min of steaming transfer the vegetables and ham into the bowl and mix them. Set aside.
- Turn on the oven to 400F. Spread the dough onto parchment paper, then transfer the spread dough on paper into the dish. Make sure the dough comes as high as possible on the sides (about an inch high or more)
- In a 2 qt bowl, mix the milk, the eggs, salt and thyme. Add 2 tbsp olive oil. Give it a few
turns to your pepper grinder. Set aside. - Add the vegetables and ham into the dish over the dough. Cover with cheese, then pour the milk and egg mix over it. Open the oven and put the dish on the middle grid. Cook for about 40 min.
- Take the dish out of the oven and let it cool for 5-10 minutes. Once cool enough, slide the quiche onto a wooden cutting board by pulling the parchment paper.
- Cut, serve with a side of salad greens! Bon appétit!
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