Galette
Just when I thought we were done with the fruit desserts (it is fall after all), along comes the galette. If you search galette online, you will get a few different things. Some of them will be made with sponge cake, others are a nice looking tart made with fruit and puff pastry, but most are a rustic looking pie/tart. In fact, when I was looking at some blogs, many people just call them rustic tarts.
As summer ended and fall began, we also began to finish up our fruit desserts. This just might be the last of them.(More cakes are on the horizon.) Nobody wants to eat a fruit dessert that is made with tasteless fruit…which happens when fruit isn’t in season. The problem we faced was deciding what flavor of galette we were going to bake. We have already made a few apple things, I am the only person in the house who eats peach things, we’ve done blueberry and raspberry items and those were mostly eaten by me as well. Rhubarb was an option but I was interested in making something with plums because, well, I’ve never done that before. Rhubarb is possibly my favorite “fruit” for desserts because I love a little tartness in my desserts, so, selecting plums was out of my comfort zone (plus, I’d have to eat the entire rhubarb dessert as well). The plums and plumcots are delicious right now so they are a great selection for fresh flavor.
The recipe we selected was from the Food Network. We used about 5 plums instead of 6 to 8. The sugar substitute we used was the Allulose…it’s all we have right now but that’s not really a bad thing. I’m used to sugar substitutes and I can’t tell when I use Allulose vs sugar. We did not add the almonds either but I did add about 1/2 tsp. of ginger because many of the plum tarts online were “plum ginger tarts”. I figured it must be good with plums or there wouldn’t be so many recipes using the two together. Finally, since we had Irish butter left over from our gateau breton, we used it for this crust. Nobody in our house likes it as plain old butter so we will only buy it for baking.
The recipe calls for a pate sablee and I referred back to a blog that I had pinned a few years ago about different pie crusts. It was a quick refresher on the different types of pie dough.
Ingredients
Filling:
- Flour, for dusting
- 6 to 8 large plums, (about 1 1/2 pounds), cut into 1/4-inch wedges
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 lemon
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 tablespoons blanched, slivered almonds, toasted, optional
Special Equipment: A rimless baking sheet, pastry brush
Pate Sablee:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 10 tablespoons butter, cut in 1/2-inch cubes, chilled
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 tablespoons ice water
Special Equipment: A food processor
Directions
- Pate Sablee: In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Pulse to combine. Add the butter and pulse the food processor on and off until the mixture resembles coarse sand with pea-sized lumps of butter still showing. Add the egg yolk and the ice water and pulse on and off until the mixture comes together but does not form a single mass. Turn the dough out onto a clean surface and gather it up into a loose ball. Working with a small bit of dough at a time, smoosh the dough across the counter away from you with the heel of your hand and then scrape it up with a pastry cutter and gather it back together, forming a second ball. Repeat with the remaining dough until all the smooshed dough is in a single ball. Flatten into a disk, wrap well in plastic wrap, and let rest in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes and up to overnight.
- Dust a clean, dry surface with a small amount of flour (take a pinch between your fingers and then throw it onto the countertop like you were shooting dice). With a rolling pin, roll the pate sablee using quick, short strokes from the middle of the dough, until you’ve formed a circle roughly 10-inches in diameter and about 1/4-inch thick. Every few strokes, lift and turn the dough a quarter-turn, dusting underneath with a small amount more of flour, if necessary, to prevent sticking. Place your rolling pin over the bottom quarter of the dough and lift the bottom edge of the dough up and over the pin. Roll the pin away from you slightly to help gather the dough circle onto the pin, then unroll the dough onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Place the baking sheet in the refrigerator to chill for 10 minutes and up to 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Place the plum wedges in a bowl and toss with the sugar and juice of half a lemon. Remove the baking sheet from the freezer. Working from the center, arrange the plum wedges thickly over the dough, leaving about a 1 1/2-inch border all around the edges. Fold the exposed edges of dough up and over the plums so that the galette looks something like a pizza with a border of crust all around the outside. Brush the dough with the beaten egg and sprinkle with more sugar. Place on the bottom rack of the oven and bake until the crust is golden and the fruit is soft, about 1 hour. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly on a baking rack. If using, sprinkle with the toasted almonds.
- When the galette is no longer hot to the touch, slide onto a cake plate or pedestal. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Our Experience
This was my second attempt at making a dough using my new, ginormous (compared to my old one), food processor. Making this dough required mixing the dry ingredients and then cutting in the fat…just like most pastries.
I know I have mentioned it before, but I will point out again that when I add the fat to the dry ingredients, I always make sure each piece is coated. I think it helps the fats from sticking together and keeps the separated even before they are mixed/processed.
After adding the wet ingredients, it was processed until crumbly and not a big lump of dough. It was then turned out onto the counter and brought together by hand.
Once it was brought together, we formed it into a flat disk so it would be easier to roll into a round crust and then put it in the refrigerator to chill.
After it had chilled the required amount of time, we took it out and rolled it into a flat “circle”. It was difficult to roll out without it cracking on the edges since it was cold. I don’t know if I would chill it in the future because of this.
Since the crust was really stiff when it was cold (duh), I decided not to chill it again after it was rolled out. I figured it wouldn’t fold up on the fruit very well if it were stiff and I didn’t want it breaking. That crust needed to hold in all the juices that the fruit was going to create and every crack would be a weak point for juices to escape during cooking.
We didn’t assemble the plums before we needed them because we didn’t want to create a lot of juice before filling the dough.
We sliced them pretty thin because we really wanted the plums to be soft when we bit into them.
Once the plums were ready, it was a quick assembly. The plums were arranged in the middle of the dough, the dough was folded up, and an egg was was put on the dough. Easy peasy.
What we liked.
Well, “we” in this case was “me”. Aubrey tasted it but, as usual, she didn’t eat more than a bite. She said it was good but I always wonder how accurate her review can be if she only eats one bite? 😉 Nobody else was interested in trying it. Plums aren’t their favorite fruit so they decided they wouldn’t appreciate cooked ones either…their loss!! IT WAS DELICIOUS! I just might love these cooked plums as much as I love rhubarb. They had great flavor and sweetness but also had that little bit of tartness that I love in a dessert.
The crust was so buttery and flaky. It may also be my new favorite because it was also super easy to make and work with. Fresh out of the oven, it had a really nice crispness to it. It lost some of that overnight but it was still very good like any day old pie crust is, in my humble opinion.
I think I ate all but two pieces of it…over the course of several days, obviously. Which was difficult because I could have eaten the whole thing in one sitting! Willpower (sort of)!! I will definitely make another one because it was so good and so easy. I need to figure out how to cut some more calories out of it so I can eat a piece for breakfast every day (if I want to) without having to cut a bunch of calories later in the day!
Oh, and who can look at that and not think it’s pretty. Even though it’s a rustic dessert, it is very attractive and the plums were such a pretty color.
What we would change.
I would not chill the dough before trying to roll it out and I wouldn’t chill it before putting the fruit on and folding the sides up (which I didn’t do after seeing how stiff it was when chilled). If you need to put it in the refrigerator before rolling it out, I would suggest letting it warm up a little bit or the dough is going to get big cracks in the edges as you roll it and you will have to pinch them together by getting it warm anyway. Chilling it after the sides are folded up onto the fruit would be perfectly fine.
What we learned.
We made our first pate sucree, or at least one that was actually called a pate sucree. We used the new food processor for another dough and it worked like a charm. We might be giving the 30 year old KitchenAid a rest once in awhile from now on.
Until next week, Happy Baking!