Tarte aux pommes

So this week at Ferrandi, the first recipe on our list was tarte aux pommes, an apple tart. The tart consisted of dough, applesauce, and sliced apples. Sounds relatively simple, doesn't it? Well don't be fooled by the french version of an apple pie.

For the base of the tart, Chef Averty taught us how to make pate a foncer aka pate sable aka short pastry dough for you English speakers. It's a simple dough made out of flour, butter, salt, sugar, egg yolk, and water. Look at that lovely mise en place.

After forming and chilling, we rolled out the dough and placed it in a tarte ring. We also crimped the edge of the crust, which is traditional for most French tarts.

The next day, we peeled, cored, and sliced apples, filled the tartes, baked them off and glazed them with apricot glaze. After filling my tarte, I thought it looked pretty good. However, it was not "finished" according to Chef. The first picture below is my original tarte, the second is after adding more apple to "complete" the tarte. I almost wonder how it would have come out if I had baked the first one.

I was pretty pleased with the finished product. Chef commented that my tarte looked "aggressive", though I'm not really sure how a pastry can look aggressive. It isn't as though my knife is buried somewhere underneath all those apples. I guess the second layer of apples are a little jagged, and look like "lion claws" (not my word choice). Still, not too horrific for my first baked good at Ferrandi.