June 12

This is the second galette I’ve ever made. The first one was intended for this blog but it didn’t work out very well. I think I tried to ‘wing-it’ which is always a bad idea when you are not a proficient baker. This time, I researched the general approach to making galettes and this one was infinitely more successful (don’t worry, the burnt bits on the parchment paper are from rogue sugar crystals that I dropped on the baking sheet before putting this into the oven burning, the galette was safe and sound!). If you’ve never made a galette before, it is basically a more relaxed, rustic, pie. It doesn’t have to look perfect. In fact, a lot of it’s charm is the generous pile of fruit in the middle of a craggy, golden, crispy dough.



In my search for the most successful approach to making galette, I came across a helpful article on food52 which didn’t have a specific recipe, but went through the general approach to making galettes. I really appreciated that. Most of the time when I am trying to learn about making a baked good, I am looking for ratios that people use. Ratios of wet to dry, eggs to flour to sugar to fat. I wish that I understood what makes something moist, dry, rise, crispy, but there’s a lot to understand and I’m only just getting started.


One thing I feel pretty comfortable with at this point is the concept of using cold butter and breaking it up into flour to make a crispy, flaky dough. I like recipes that demand this (think pie crusts or scones) because you don’t have to bring butter to room temperature, which I think is one of the most annoying, deterrent thing when it comes to baking. As someone who keeps the majority of their butter in the freezer, who wants to wait until it softens, let alone come to room temperature, when they want to make something as simple as a cookie? Long story short, this is the opposite of that. If you aren’t comfortable with working butter into flour, I’ve also read some shortcuts like grating the cold butter in to ensure there are still chunks, which I haven’t tried but should work in principle.

Either way, I am happy that I finally have a galette in my repertoire. I think it is a really great summer dessert and is typically a crowd pleaser with it’s crispy crust, dotted with crunchy, raw pieces of sugar and the fruity filling, which isn’t too runny but definitely moist. I can’t wait to try this with peaches and blackberries.