Recipe
🍽️ DINNER
Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche)
Paper-thin dough blistered under crème fraîche, onions, and lardons, Alsace’s answer to pizza, out of the oven in minutes.
French (Alsatian) · easy · serves 3
prep 20 min · cook 12 min
~637 cal · 16g protein · 70g carbs · 32g fat · 3g fiber · 2g sugars · 9g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Tarte flambee, or flammekueche in the Alsatian dialect, was born of practicality in the farmhouses of Alsace on the French-German border. Bakers used it to test the heat of their wood-fired ovens before the week's bread went in: a paper-thin round of dough that scorched at the edges in two or three minutes told them the oven was ready.
Rather than waste that first bake, they topped it with whatever was on hand, fromage blanc or thick cream, thinly sliced onions, and lardons of smoked bacon, and ate it straight away. What began as a baker's temperature gauge became the region's convivial supper.
It is meant to be shared and eaten with the hands, torn piece after piece straight from the board while the next one bakes, so a tarte flambee meal comes in relays rather than all at once. Crisp, smoky, and blistered, it sits somewhere between a pizza and a cracker, and it belongs to long, easy evenings.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally nut- and egg-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 3
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup crème fraîche
1/2 cup fromage blanc (or all crème fraîche)
6 oz smoked lardons (bacon)
1 large yellow onion, very thinly sliced
a scrape nutmeg
generous black pepper
2 tbsp
1 tsp salt (dough)
Instructions
1
Knead flour, oil, salt, and ~2/3 cup water into a lean dough; rest 20 minutes. No yeast, it must stay thin and crisp.
2
Roll as thin as you dare, almost translucent, onto parchment.
3
Spread the crème mixture edge to edge; season with nutmeg and pepper.
4
Scatter onions and lardons (or mushroom lardons) evenly.
5
Bake at your oven’s maximum (500°F+) on a hot steel 10-12 minutes until the edges char. Slide off, cut in squares, eat with your hands.
Alsace farmhouse-oven tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Alsace. Alsace blends French and German cooking, choucroute (sauerkraut with pork), flammekueche tart, and riesling. A crossroads of two cultures, it eats hearty and bakes beautifully.
🗺️
France. France turned cooking into a discipline, codifying techniques and sauces that shaped Western cuisine, yet its soul lies in regional home cooking, Provençal vegetables, Alsatian tarts, Burgundian braises. Bread, butter, cheese, and wine are treated as everyday essentials.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
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Browse all France recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Oven.
Storing it: Best the day it is made. Wrap well and refresh in a warm oven, or freeze and reheat straight from frozen.
Make it a France meal
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Croque MonsieurLunch
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Frequently asked questions
What is Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche)?
Paper-thin dough blistered under crème fraîche, onions, and lardons, Alsace’s answer to pizza, out of the oven in minutes.
Where does Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche) come from?
Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche) is a French (Alsatian) dish from Alsace, France.
Can Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Tarte Flambée (Flammekueche) take to make?
About 32 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 12 minutes cooking), serving 3.
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