Cheese, Onion & Bacon Quiche

I do love to bake things on the weekend, so I also made a quiche as I still had some bacon bits and cheese left so I decided to go a gluten free cheese, bacon and onion quiche. This was with the idea of freezing the quiche into slices, so that we have some food already made for lunches.

I've always loved quiche and I'm not really sure why, whenever it was available at a buffet it was always one of the first things that I'd reach for. There's something about the cheesy set eggs with the buttery pastry that I really like. I was always a big fan of anything with pastry!

The good thing about quiche is it's one of those recipes that you can adjust to your tastes really simply and you can use all of your leftover ingredients in it. If you are a big cheese fan like me, if you have leftover cheese in the fridge, or perhaps from your cheeseboard then put it in instead of the cheddar. Goats cheese and watercress is really nice.

I've got a bit of a healthier version that I've previously made as well which is a frittata version of a quiche. I'll share this with you at some point as well. Its basically got all of the nice flavours of a quiche, without the pastry, but for now...on to the quiche!

Ingredients

Pastry

175 g plain Doves Farm Gluten Free flour

75 g of butter, plus extra for greasing

A pinch of salt

1 egg, beaten

For the filling:

250 g of cheddar, grated (please select your cheese dependent upon your taste, I used mature)

200 g bacon -chopped

5 eggs , beaten

300 ml of milk

4 slices of tomato (this is optional, I didn't use these as I din't have them available)

A pinch of salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon of dried thyme
1/2 onion (optional)

Method:

1. Start by making the pastry; sift the flour with the salt into a large bowl. If you are using a food processor, please put in the food processor with the butter and blitz in short bursts until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs (please do not over mix). If doing this by hand, rub the butter into the bowl with the flour until you get a mixture resembling breadcrumbs.
2. Tip the mixture back into the bowl if using a food processor and put in the egg. Bring the pastry together into a ball and if it is still not coming together properly then use a little water, it should be a firm dough. Rest this in the fridge for 30 minutes.
3. Butter a flan dish, which should be 22cm / 8 1/2 inch in size, then roll the pastry out and place into the flan dish. I rolled mine out on cling film, then put the flan dish upside down on the pastry then tipped the pastry on top. Please place this back in the fridge to chill.
4. Preheat the oven to 190c / 375F / Gas 5.
5. Line the bottom of the pastry with baking parchment, then put in baking beans or if you don't have baking beans you can use rice. Bake it for 20 minutes, remove from the oven and take out the baking beans / rice. Bake for another 5 minutes before removing. Whilst the quiche is in the oven, please be frying off your bacon on a medium heat for 10 - 15 minutes. Chop / crumble the bacon into small pieces.
6. Reduce the oven to 160 c/ 325 F / Gas 3.
7. Sprinkle most of the cheese into the bottom, then place in the chopped bacon. Put the onion in if using.
8. Beat the eggs and milk and pour over the cheese and bacon, sprinkle the top with thyme. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on the top.
9. Trim the edges of your pastry and bake for 30 - 40 minutes until the egg mixture has set.
10. If you are going to freeze your quiche, please wait for the quiche to completely cool, cut into portions and pop into a freezer box and put into the freezer.

Notes:

If you find some of your pastry breaks away when you are rolling it out, then just used some of the overlapping pastry to fix the gaps. Also if you're not using gluten free flour, then do not put an egg in the pastry mixture and use water to bring the pastry together.

This is where i took my initial inspiration from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/quichelorraine_71987

I really liked the pastry in this recipe and think it held together really well. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did