I never realized until I watched a French TV show that “free form tart” is a concept that does not exist in the French cuisine. Food blogger Pascale Weeks of C’est moi qui l’ai fait pointed out that fact in the episode. It is strange that never noticed it before. Although I have seen it many times, I never considered making a free form tart until now. I am planning to change that.
I learned that the key for a successful free form tart is to beautifully place the fruit pieces in a big circle and to gently fold the edges of the dough up. For a more sophisiticated look, pass a fluted pastry wheel on the dough before you fold it. As you can see, I became a fan of their rustic look and feel.
It is not just for sweet tarts, you can go free form for savory tarts. Here are a few tasty free form tart recipes that you may want to bookmark:
- Onion Tart recipe – photo by Quentin Bacon for Food & Wine
- The Best Fig Tart by Chez Pim
- Apple tart from the Williams-Sonoma kitchen
You remember the TV show that inspired me to talk about free form tarts. It has a must-see segment where they followed Bea of La Tartine Gourmande as she worked on a food story. Her 8-minute segment starts at 2/3 of the show; so, unless you speak French, advance Envoyé Spécial – la suite until you hit 16 minutes. Bea wrote a wonderful post where she described, in English, the making of process of her TV segment. She was great on camera!
MORE:
+ top left photo: Tarte rustique aux poires et noisettes, sans moule by Pascale Weeks of C’est moi qui l’ai fait!
Celia
April 7, 2010 at 13:03They look delicious! Indeed that’s right, French (like me!) don’t really cook free form tarts except maybe for small and individual tarts, when the pastry needs to be very thin : I used to cook individual apple tarts such like that, with very thin slices of apple, a bit of sugar and cinamon, served warm with a scope of vannilla ice cream : Mmmm !