What went wrong with my creme fraiche mixture?

TLDR: A mixture of creme fraiche and farmer's cheese separated into a watery curdly mess after I added salt and pepper. Why? How do I prevent that?

Details: I was making something similar to a flammkuchen (or tarte flambee), kinda winging it as I usually do. Most of the info I found online said to use a mix of creme fraiche and fromage blanc. However, I could not locate fromage blanc anywhere. I'm in the US and not near a big city so I was not surprised to be unable to find it. I decided to use a farmer's cheese (Friendship dairy brand) as a substitute after looking at my options at the local store.

I mixed the creme fraiche and farmer's cheese together and had a nice spreadable consistency I was happy with for my purpose. Then I seasoned it with some salt & pepper as most of my reference recipes said to.

As soon as I started to stir, I noticed the consistency had changed, becoming thinner. By the time I figured the salt & pepper was evenly distributed, I had something that resembled a very small curd cottage cheese swimming in watery milky fluid. Not something I could spread on my puff pastry base. (Yes, I do know puff pastry is not the traditional base for flammkuchen.)

I was able to rescue it by straining off the worst of the liquid. It was a little unslightly because the little individual curds were still visible even after baking, but it still tasted good in the finished product. I'd like to make this again, and would like suggestions on how to avoid having my creme fraiche mixture separate.

submitted by /u/Little_Girl_Blue_
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