Tourtiure Gasconne / Tourtire

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The tourtière (or tourtiÈre) gasconne is a spiraling pastry of remarkable architectural beauty — paper-thin stretched dough coiled into a towering spiral filled with Armagnac-macerated apples and seasoned with orange flower water, baked to a golden, impossibly flaky crispness. It represents the same hand-stretched pastry tradition as the pastis gascon but in a different structural form: rather than layering sheets, the tourtière rolls the stretched dough around the filling into a continuous spiral that expands during baking into a rose-like pattern of concentric rings. The dough (identical to pastis gascon: flour, egg, water, oil, salt) is stretched on a cloth-covered table to near-transparency, then brushed liberally with melted goose fat. The apple filling (firm apples peeled and sliced thin, macerated in 80ml Armagnac, 100g sugar, and 2 tablespoons orange flower water) is scattered across the dough. Starting from one edge, the dough is rolled into a long, thin cylinder, then coiled into a spiral in a buttered round mold (turtière in Gascon), building from the center outward. The top is brushed with more goose fat and dusted with sugar. Baking at 185°C for 30-35 minutes produces a golden, crackly exterior with layers of crisp pastry and tender apple visible in cross-section. The orange flower water is the distinctive aromantic — its floral perfume, combined with the Armagnac’s warmth and the goose fat’s richness, creates a flavor profile unique to Gascony. The tourtière is traditionally made for Sunday lunch and shared at the table, each person pulling layers from the spiral.

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