Day 91 – Spinach, Bacon & Gruyère Quiche

Mmmmm…dinner.
Boys may not eat cookies, but real men eat quiche, right?
I have to say, my husband has never been a “fan of quiche”, but the kids have consistently loved it. It’s been a few years since I’ve made it, so I cleaned out the cobwebs in my head to access the recipe in my brain. I also made it tonight because I needed to make dinner and today’s recipe for the blog. There’s still a couple leftover chicken enchiladas in the fridge anyway if this doesn’t turn out and pecan pie for dessert.
Please note that you may want to read through this whole post and decide what oven temp. would work best for you. After 8 hours of baking (ok, I grossly exaggerate, but it was taking FOREVER), the quiche still wasn’t setting. Read on and then talk amongst yourselves. The topic:  oven temperature settings to ensure that you will be having quiche for dinner and not breakfast the next morning.

Spinach, Bacon & Gruyere Quiche

I used the Fannie Farmer Cookbook Thirteenth Edition for the crust, p. 639; author, Marion Cunningham; publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a division of Random House, Inc.; ISBN 0-394-56788-9.

Pastry Shell – 9-inch pie shell
     1½ cup flour
     ¼ teaspoon salt
     ½ cup shortening
     ¼ teaspoon dried dill
     3-4 tablespoons cold water (I ended up using about 7)
 
Preheat the oven to 450ºF.
Mix the flour and salt. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or two knives. Combine lightly only until the mixture resembles coarse meal or very tiny peas:  its texture will be uniform, but will contain crumbs and small bits and pieces. Add dill seasoning. Sprinkle water over the flour mixture, a tablespoon at a time, and mix lightly with a fork, using only enough water so that the pastry will hold together when pressed gently together. Roll the dough out 2 inches larger than the pie pan. Fit it loosely, but firmly into the pan. Crimp or flute the edges.
Cover with a double lining of tin foil and bake for 8 minutes. Uncover and bake for 8 minutes more or until crust is set and dry.
Decrease oven temperature to 325ºF.
(After the uncovered 8 minutes, the bottom of the crust was bubbly and still moist. I lined it with parchment and poured rice into it to add weight. Doing this added another 10 minutes to the baking time.)  Notice I also pricked the crust, completely forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to do that. Ah well, it’s just too difficult to fill in all those tiny holes…

In a small bowl, combine Gruyere cheese and flour. Mix until cheese is thoroughly coated. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat eggs. Add milk, salt, pepper, crumbled bacon, and cheese/flour mixture. Mix well.