Apple Galette
When I’m asked what my favorite foods are, my reply (for the first two) is always the same; pork and pie. Nothing can smooth the troubles from my world like a good piece of pork with a little fat clinging to the edges and nothing is more satisfying to my sweet tooth than a flaky, buttery crust cradling a a fruit filling.
I’m not very skilled at baking pies but this galette is my forte. It starts with a simple dough from the cookbook Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. The recipe in the book says that it will produce enough for two galettes but I’ve never been able to make that happen. I just bake one large galette. But the dough is so simple that I use it all the time. The apple filling is an adaptation from the Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. The cornstarch keeps the juices from being too runny and the cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest, and vanilla really give the apples a depth that they don’t have on their own, yet they don’t overpower the apples, the flavors are well balanced and work for each other.
Galette Dough
1 cup unbleached flour
3 tablespoons stone ground cornmeal
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons absolutely cold butter, diced
1/3 cup ice water
3 tablespoons either yogurt, buttermilk or creme fraiche
Put the flour, cornmeal, salt and sugar in the bowl of your mixer and mix them up on low until they are combined. Add the butter and let the mixer run on medium low until the largest pieces of butter are reduced to the size of small peas and the butter is all smeared about. Stir the yogurt into the water. Turn the mixer on to medium low and add the liquid to the mixer bowl by tablespoons until the dough comes together somewhat. The truth is it shouldn’t actually come together on its own but if you were to squeeze a handful of the dough it would stick together. There will be lots of dough shards, and flour mixture in the bottom of the bowl but that’s okay. Dump the contents of the bowl onto a sheet of saran wrap. Using your hands form a patty of dough about 3/4 inch thick and shaped like a circle. Wrap it up and refrigerate it for at least two hours.
Apple Galette Filling
5 Apples, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon double strength vanilla extract
Put all of the filling ingredients in a bowl and toss them until they are well mixed.
Preheat your oven to 375.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it and place it on a lightly floured counter. Using your rolling pin, gently yet firmly roll it out a circle of about 15 inches in diameter. This is best done by rolling towards 10 o’clock, then rolling towards 12 o’clock, and then rolling towards 2 o’clock, and then gently rotating the dough clockwise so that what was 10 o’clock is now 4 o’clock. About halfway through you should flip the dough so the other side is up. Every so often you’ll need to add flour to the dough and the counter to keep it from sticking. Sometimes its necessary to take dough from one area and cut and paste it in another area. This is easy to do when you are rolling it out. Once it is rolled out transfer it to a cookie sheet lined with parchment. The easiest way to transfer is to make sure the surface is lightly dusted with flour then fold it over and move it and then unfold it.
Put the filling in the middle of the dough, fold the edges into the center. Lightly wet them with water and sprinkle turbinado sugar on the top. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, cool a bit, and eat it warm. It is so good.
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9 Responses to “Apple Galette”
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Vanessa!
Thank you so much for the lovely gifts you sent to me for the BBM! I loved each and every one of them and loved your letter even more.
And I am thrilled to discover a new blog!
Send me an email; I’d love to “chat!”
Thank you once again!
Maya
Wow this looks great. I normally make this dish with packaged puff pastry, but this looks even better. I’m especially curious about the dough you used… It looks similar to the dough for a pastry I’ve been trying to find, I’ll have to try it out and see. Thanks!
Sean, thanks for stopping by. Let me know how it goes for you. I’ve never had a problem with this recipe except when the fruit is too juicy and it leaks. When that happens I usually just toss the whole thing in a butter baking dish to finish it off. It was still yummy.
I made it last night and it worked great (even without the lemon and forgetting the vanilla)! The pastry turned out very nice, and it was easy to work with. FWIW I used buttermilk.
Sean
Buttermilk is a favorite of mine too, although I rarely have it in the frig. My frig is never big enough.
Vanessa, what kind of apples do you like to use for this? I notice you made this in January, the off-season for some of my favorite Wisconsin apples (like Cortland).
Here’s an article I published about local apples, for your reading pleasure:
http://ulysses.blogware.com/blog/Vesnaspublishedwork/_archives/2006/10/1/2384947.html
Vesna, I had to actually go back and look when I shot that photo. The apples were local and from Willy St. Co-op but I can’t remember their name and for some reason I didn’t write it down. But it was made around November 3. The apples are shown in this post and they are the green ones on the right:
http://www.whatgeekseat.com/wordpress/?p=46
Once Apple season is over I usually go to berries. I freeze quite a few over the summer. Although I’ll admit in a pinch, if I’m really mojoing for an apple galette I’ll use Granny Smiths…not local, not fresh, and sometimes I’m not even sure they’re real, but they do bake up well.
Thanks for stopping by and making me want pie.
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Beautiful. Really beautiful.