Cheese and Basil Quiche

Recipe:

Ingredient notes:

• Flour. Since the dough in this recipe is shortbread, you will need flour that is not strong. Basic all-purpose flour with about 10% protein is fine. Even better is cake flour with 8-9% protein. A stronger bread flour will make the dough stiffer.
• Butter. The ideal fat content of butter for this recipe is 82.5%. The minimum is 72%. This will make the dough less flaky and more uniform. This is generally acceptable in this case.
• Cheese. Here 2 different types of cheese are used. Within each type, you can make variable substitutions. Semi-hard cheeses are Cheddar, Gouda, Emmental, etc. You can also use low moisture mozzarella or suluguni cheese. The second cheese is feta. Instead of feta, you can use brynza or other salty cheese with a crumbly texture.
• Sour cream. In the filling for quiche you can replace it with cream with a fat content of 20-35%.
• Eggs. The size of the eggs is M. This is about 50-55 grams without shells.
• Herbs. The main flavor is given by basil. But you can change the set of herbs. In combination with scallions you can use parsley, dill or a more neutral option – spinach. Another option is to use a few tablespoons of pesto instead of basil, if you have it.

Let’s start cooking.

Make the dough. Place the flour, salt, sugar and cubed cold butter in the bowl of a food processor. Process until you have coarse, fatty crumbs.

Pour in the water and knead the dough as quickly as possible. Do not knead too long or the butter will melt and the dough will be tough.

Form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30-40 minutes.

Once cooled, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 3 mm and place in a pan. Pierce with a fork.

Cover with foil and fill with weights – beans, peas or rice.

Bake in the oven at 180°C for 10 minutes. Take it out, remove the foil with the weight and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes. Do not turn off the oven.

Prepare the filling.

Grate the cheese on a coarse grater.

Add the chopped herbs, eggs and sour cream.

Pay attention to the salt content of the cheese. If feta or its substitutes are high in salt, you don’t need to add it to the filling.

Stir the filling.

Place in the baked pie base and spread evenly.

Place in the oven and bake until the filling is set and golden brown, about 15-20 minutes. If your oven has a fan, turn it on.

Allow the finished quiche to rest in the pan for 15 minutes, then remove, slice and serve.

The quiche is delicious hot or cold.

Enjoy!