Mushroom Onion 7 Brachot Quiche / The Ultimate Guide to Pie Crust

Generally speaking, my son Netanel is a straightforward young man and when he expresses himself, he is direct, in a good way. Once in a while, however, he can be clever and somewhat manipulative, but in a good way. 🙂 What I mean is, he called me at the office and nudged me several times asking when I’d be home.

Now he almost never does this, and is very independent so I finally said, Nu, what gives? So he said, Momers (his pet name for me) I have to make a quiche tonight for a 7 brachot for a friend of mine. But I thought if YOU would make it, you could then post it on your blog. I confess, I cracked up and although I was well aware I was being manipulated, it was so funny and frankly, I’ve wanted to post a proper quiche for awhile that I said okay just buy me the ingredients. And he did.

Quiche is a delicious food if made properly but I won’t lie to you, this takes time. The filling is fast to put together and easy to make but the pie crust is what takes time. Under normal circumstances (not like when my son is waiting to take it to a party) I would make the crust (or a few crusts) and plunk it wrapped in the fridge so that I could at greater leisure put the quiche together.

What, you might ask, is the big deal? To have the crust come out crispy and not shrink, and be flaky, you must have your butter (yes, I used butter, yumyumyum not marg although you can use marg) very cold. Then, you absolutely have to refrigerate the crust twice. First time is when you make the crust, pat into a circle and wrap and then refrigerate it, and the second time is after you roll it out and put it into the pan. This takes time and if you skip these steps it simply won’t come out the way it should and you will be disappointed in the outcome and won’t understand why your pie crusts don’t come out well. This is the main reason.

Briefly, the point of the cold butter and the refrigeration thereafter is that when the cold butter in the piecrust, melts in the oven, the steam it creates cause pockets and this is what makes a flaky crust. Also, I add some vinegar to make it more tender.

On to our quiche. Start with the pie crust since this needs the refrigeration and should go first. My best method for doing this is in the food processor. You can use a mixer as well but I personally prefer the swift action of the processor.

Cut up your cold butter into cubes.

Then take the flour and salt and put into food processor.

and whirl in pulses till the butter/flour/salt mixture looks crumbly

Add the vinegar and water and pulse just till it forms a soft mass. You will hardly need to pat into a circle, it will form together nicely.

Wrap this in plastic wrap or a plastic bag and pop into the fridge for about 30 minutes. If you are in a desperate hurry, pop in freezer for 15 minutes.

Then, I use my fab Oxo silicone sheet (a silpat that both sticks to the surface of my countertop like glue yet peels right off, and you can actually bake on as well, love, love, love) but since this was dairy, I placed a see through parchment paper over it.

Roll out to the size you need. I made two quiches, one 9 inch and the other 12 inches (for the 7 brachot). I roll out the dough to 11 inches for the 9 inch one so you will have the dough ease right into the pan without tearing and will have enough for crimping the top without a hassle. For the 12 inch, to 14 and so on.

And the rolled out pie crust.

Then ease it into the pie pan. Another little trick is to roll this out on some flour (not tons, just a little and don’t grease the pie pan. Let the floured bottom of the crust go into the dish. There is enough butter to not stick and the flour actually helps prevent sticking too.

and the 12 incher

This is in a disposable pan since Netanel needed to take it with him and I’ve had too many pans disappear into the maw of a party to risk it.

Bung these right into the fridge with a bag around it for at least 20 minutes, preferably 30 minutes.

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 375 degrees and it’s time to make the filling.

Take two nice onions and a few baskets of mushrooms, washed and dried and slice them up in chunks.

Put in 3 tablespoons of oil with the onion and cook till medium yellow and then add the mushrooms. Toss to coat with oil and continue cooking till mushrooms are lightly cooked. No need for a long cooking for the mushrooms since they will continue to cook in the quiche.

Crack the eggs into a cup and whisk.

Put in bowl and add milk and the cream, if you wish. Whisk together till fully combined.

Add the spices, I put in some smoked paprika for a lovely hint of smokiness, Italian spice mix which has oregano, basil, rosemary and other goodies, salt and pepper. Whisk it up.

Back to our crusts. Take them out and put in the oven (preheated only) for 20 minutes to pre-bake the crust. Now I know, since I used to be one of you, that there are some people out there who will say, why bother? I’ll just put in the filling and bake it together. NO NO NO NO PLEASE don’t. This is the big diff between a flaky crispy crust containing the smooth custardy filling of the quiche. If you don’t prebake, you will have a soggy crust and that’s that. So if you’ve already gone to the trouble of chilling and etc. prebake your crust. Now I did something terrible and didn’t blind bake my pie crusts. I know I took a big chance but I lucked out and they kept their shape.

Do as I say and not as I did 😉 . Blind baking is simply taking a roasting bag and filling it up with uncooked beans and laying the bag on top of the crust during the prebake. This way the crust doesn’t fold in on itself and maintains its shape. Generally speaking, if you don’t do this, the edges collapse into the center, a horror and then you cannot pour in the filling. If you ask why I was bad, I didn’t find my bean bag (you can reuse it ad infinitum, just store in your pantry for whenever you bake a crust) and I had no beans available. So I bit my nails and prayed. Not the best way to go, but I guess since I was doing a good deed, G-d took pity on me. Not recommended in general – at all!

But here I found a picture from another pie I baked where I couldn’t find a roasting bag, but had beans so I just put parchment paper over the crust and poured beans into it. Really, you need to put enough beans to cover the whole pie bottom. This is just a demo.

Remember to save your beans! It’s reusable and worth it.

Bake 20 minutes and pull out of the oven. on a rack, if possible.

Then, take your cooled mixture of onion and mushrooms, and scatter them on the pie crust.

Then top with the grated cheese.

Btw, note the crust is a medium beige. That’s the right color. Since you will be baking the quiche for approximately 40 minutes, you don’t want it too dark or it will get burnt edges – nasty.

Next, pour the liquid filling of eggs, milk/cream and spices over this.

As you can see, the filling floats a bit and that’s normal and then you can decide if you wish to sprinkle additional cheese on or not. I decided my cheese amount looked a bit sparse so I added a few sprinkles more.

Then straight into the oven they go, you don’t want the wet ingredients to sit too long on the crust. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, check after 30 to see if it is properly set. You want it beautifully browned and set and gently using oven mitts or a towel (be careful) jiggle the pan to see if the filling jiggles. If so, keep in a bit longer or till it’s no longer jiggling but set. A note, my quiche was done (the 9 inch) sooner than Netanel’s 12 inch one. The bigger quiche needed about 10 more minutes.

And then you slice into it after allowing it to cool for about 5 minutes and voila

The pie crust was crisp, the filling deliciously custardy but firm and guess what? Netanel informed me the next morning that the quiche was a huge hit and not a crumb was left. There, manipulated but laughing!

Mushroom Onion 7 Brachot Quiche 

Pie crust – this is for two pie crusts, or two quiches, generous

4 1/2 cups flour 
1.75 cups or 400 grams very cold butter – (in short, not two full cups of butter rather one full cup and about 3/4 cup) cut in cubes
Pinch salt (about 1/2 teaspoon)
2 teaspoon vinegar 
1/2 cup ice or very cold water – you may not need all of it, I’ll explain

Filling

2 boxes of mushrooms, washed well and patted dry
1 large or 2 medium onions, peeled, cleaned and chopped
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
A teaspoon and a half of salt
Half a teaspoon of smoked paprika
Mixed Italian spices, or a heaping teaspoon or so combined of oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and a pinch of black pepper- whichever you like best
3 1/4 cups milk 
1/4 cup cream 
7 eggs 
2 1/2 cups cheese, grated

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

In a food processor, pulse together the flour, salt and butter cubes till they start to look like crumbs. Add the vinegar and pulse briefly. Then, add the water slowly through the opening just till the mass of the dough comes together and stop immediately when it does. The dough should be velvety tender and soft. You might be tempted to add flour but don’t, this will toughen it. Rather oil or wet your hands and get every bit of the dough, pat into a flattened circle (see above) and wrap in plastic wrap and bung in the fridge for half an hour. That’s my preferred method. This time because of time pressure, I actually plunked it in the freezer for a little longer than fifteen minutes and it worked a treat. Go me.

Then get started on the filling. Chop the onion and sautee in oil till medium yellow and add the chopped onion and sautee together till the mushrooms are lightly cooked about 5 minutes. Don’t let the mushrooms get too dark since you don’t want them to give up their liquid and they will continue to cook in the oven. Set aside to cool.

Now you should be able to take out your pie dough and roll out on a lightly floured surface to the desired size, ease into pan flour side down and crimp and either using a roasting bag filled with beans (uncooked navy beans are what I use) or put the beans on top of a piece of parchment paper on top of crust, to blind bake the crust so that it maintains its shape and bake for 20 minutes till medium beige in color. Remove and let sit on rack.

Now take a medium bowl, crack your eggs into it and add your milk and cream and spices. Now you don’t have to use cream although it does add richness to the end product but if you don’t simply up the amount of milk that additional 1/4 of a cup. Whisk the eggs, milk and spices till fully combined.

Scatter the onions and mushrooms on the bottom of the crust (see pic above), sprinkle with the cheese and pour the egg/milk mixture over all. See if you want more cheese and carefully put into the preheated oven for approximately 40 minutes. Check at 30 or so minutes if richly browned and no longer jiggly. If not, try another 10 minutes and yes, you may peek at five minute intervals at this point to see if it’s done.

Remove from oven when set in the middle and let cool/set up for about 5 minutes and then slice and serve. A delightful meal for breakfast lunch or supper and can be served room temp as well. Not advisable to freeze since the custard filling will get watery.

Note, I give a recipe for two quiches here, you can halve this if you choose. Personally, even if you don’t need two quiches, I’d still make the full quantity of pie crust since pie crust freezes beautifully for about 3 months and then you have it available.