Quiches are easy and I make them often. Every time I serve a quiche to friends, they just as often compliment the texture of the crust as they do the taste of the quiche itself. Here's the recipe for the crust, and instructions for how to make any quiche from there.
Quiche Crust (25 minute prep time, 50 minute oven time)
Ingredients
+ 1.25 cups flour
+ 1/2 tsp salt
+ 3 tbps water
+ 1 egg
+ most of a stick of butter (6 tbps)
Preparation
Preheat oven 400 degrees.
Cut cold butter into the flour. I do this by hand, by cutting the stick of butter into a bunch of medium pieces, and squishing it into the flour until the entire mixture feels like kinetic clay, and looks like this:
By adding the butter to the flour before any liquid ingredients, you're preventing the gluten from polymerizing and forming a tough mesh. This way you get a delicious crumbly crust. Next add the rest of the ingredients, mix until incorporated and knead until homogenous.
Use a rolling pin to flatten dough on a floured surface. If its too sticky, throw the dough into the fridge to make it firm up. Once its flattened, throw it on your quiche pan -- don't worry about it sticking -- there's so much butter that it's never an issue. Also this recipe makes a little too much dough for a typical quiche pan -- so don't worry about having extra at the end.
There are almost no rules about what to do next -- just whisk together ~1.5 cups light cream and 3-4 eggs together for the quiche guts, and add whatever other ingredients you desire! Cooking those ingredients on a pan beforehand is a good idea (like caramelized onions, softened zucchini squash, or bacon bits). Don't forget salt.
After 30 minutes in the oven, you can use the "jiggle test" (© my mom) , whereby you turn on the oven light and slap the oven door while watching the quiche. If you see ripples travel the surface like a rock thrown in a pond, then its not ready.
