Any Kind of Fruit Galette
I’ve been making some version of this galette for years and years, always with the same framework. The pie dough is from Sister Pie in Detroit, which is my favorite pie dough that I keep coming back to but I change the filling up all the time, depending on what fruit is in season.
Things to keep in mind:
Try not to overwork the pie dough - over mixing and kneading makes the dough more tough.
Make sure to chill the dough for at least an hour. Having cold butter is critical for the pastry to bake up flaky and not doughy.
The most important part!! Taste the fruit filling before you bake! If it tastes good raw, it’ll taste even better when its cooked
Makes 1 10-inch galette or 2 5-inch galettes
Ingredients:
For the crust:
1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
½ tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp + 1 tsp granulated sugar, divided
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3 tbsp Ice water
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
For the filling:
4 cups of summer fruit (stone fruit, berries, etc) chopped or thinly sliced
Pinch of salt
Juice and zest from 1 lemon
1/4 - 1/2 cups brown sugar (depends on how sweet your fruit is
optional: 1-1 ½ tbsp cornstarch ( see notes below)
2 tbsp unsalted butter
Directions:
Make the pastry:
Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a medium bowl. Sprinkle butter pieces into the dough and using a pastry blender, fork or your fingers, work it into the flour until the mixture resembles small peas. Combine 3 tbsp ice water and 1 tbps apple cider vinegar and stri it into the mixture. Continue to toss the mixture with a fork to incorporate, and then use your hands to bring the dough into a single mass, with few dry spots remaining. If the dough feels too dry to come together, you can add a few more drops of water at a time to help bring it together.
Transfer the dough to a large swatch of plastic wrap, flatten into a disk and wrap it tightly in plastic. Chill at least 1 hour (I like to chill in the freezer for 30 minutes to speed things up before moving to the fridge) and up to 3 days.
Make the filling:
Combine the fruit, salt, lemon juice and zest and sugar into a medium bowl. The sugar and lemon will pull liquid out of the fruit and depending on how juicy the fruit is, it might be a lot. If there is a lot of liquid (like more than 1/4 cup) pooling at the bottom, you have two options:
Drain the juice and reduce it in a small sauce pan until it forms a thickened syrup, and then add that back to the fruit. This will give you the purest flavor and reduce the chalky flavor you can get from cornstarch. If you do this, I like to let the fruit sit as long as possible to pull out as much liquid out as I can before I strain it (sometimes I’ll even do this the night before)
Add in cornstarch as a thickener. Different kinds of fruit have different pectin levels, and it also depends on how ripe your fruit is. For stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, fresh cherries, etc) you will want to use about 1 tbsp of cornstarch. For wet berries (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb) use no more than 1 ½ tbsp.
Assemble galette:
Take the dough out of the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for a couple minutes to soften. Meanwhile, heat oven to 425 and lay a piece of parchment paper on top of a large baking sheet.
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough to a 12 inch round, dusting with more flour as needed.
Gently transfer the dough to the parchment paper in the pan and spoon the fruit filing into the center, leaving a 2 inch border uncovered. Gently flold the pastry over the fruit, pleating to make sure it stays. It doesn’t have to look perfect. Brush the pastry with the egg wash, and sprinkle remaining teaspoon of sugar on the crust. At this point, I typically pop the galette back into the fridge or the freezer to get the butter cold and hard again - this helps ensure you have flaky layers. You can bake directly from the fridge or freezer, and keep in there overnight. You can also bake right away if you are tight on time.
Bake in the 425 oven for about 25 minutes, until the crust has started to puff up and it has turned slightly golden. Then turn the heat down to 375 and rotate the tray so that the galette cooks evenly. Bake for another 20 minutes, until the filling is bubbling and the crust is golden. Let cool before serving.
Do ahead:
This galette allows for a lot of do ahead options. You can split things up at the following intervals:
After you shape the dough in to a disk, chill in the fridge up to 3 days and tightly wrapped in the freezer up to 1 month
After you roll out the dough, you can chill wrapped in the fridge for 24 hours or wrapped in the freezer up to 1 week
You can make the fruit mixture the night before you plan to bake, to let the fruit macerate. If you do this I recommend draining the juice and reducing it to a syrup that you add back in later.
You can assemble the galettes and then either refrigerate or freeze overnight.
The galettes absolutely taste best day of, so I try to plan ahead and pause some of the steps if I am spreading things out over a few days, rather than making and baking everything ahead of time.