TWD Summer Fruit Galette

Galette's are one of the pastries that inspired me to be a pastry chef. Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of inspiration from my mom, some aunts and my memere; but the first time I made a galette (Jacques Pepin's recipe) was an eye opener. Jacques recipe is very simple, the dough is a pate brisee, and you top the rolled out dough with apples, a tiny bit of sugar and a little butter (of course!). After you bake it, you glaze the crust with an apricot cognac mixture. The result is the most beautiful, simple dessert ever. The first time I made it; I really understood what a great pastry was, and from there I was inspired to try different recipes, fruits, techniques, etc.

Michelle from Michelle in Colorado Springs selected Dorie’s Summer Fruit Galette as this weeks TWD recipe. I was excited to make it because I’ve never made a galette with custard in it, and as I mentioned above I love galettes. First I made the dough which was quite simple. Surprisingly, I had shortening in the house (Joe bought it to season our cast iron pans); so I followed the ingredient list. The only change I made was after processing the butter and flour, I transferred the mixture to a bowl and added the ice water; mixing by hand. I did this because I didn’t want my butter pieces to get any smaller, and I almost always finish my doughs by hand. Here’s the resulting dough, pretty nice huh?





While the dough was chilling I went to the grocery store, and I picked up some yellow and white peaches, strawberries and blueberries.

Joe was in Napa last week on a business trip, and he came home with two preserves from LouLou’s Garden. He picked up Rangpur Lime Marmalade and Strawberry Rhubarb Jam. I’m also fortunate to have received some rose petal jam from the bakery I will be working at soon called Sofra. I also had a little bit of peach preserves left over that I made last summer. As you can tell by the number of preserves at my fingertips, I was about to have a lot of fun.

I decided to make four small square shaped galettes. At Sofra we will be making some square shaped baked goods (like English muffins, cakes, etc), so I thought I may as well “get my square on” now. The flavors I decided on were white peach with rose petal jam, strawberry, blueberry and yellow peach with rose petal jam, strawberry with strawberry rhubarb jam and finally yellow peach with peach preserves.

I didn’t have graham crackers in the house, so I ground up some oats and added a bit of cinnamon and brown sugar to it; to act as the absorbing agent.



The galettes came together quickly. After 20 or so minutes in the oven, I took them out and added the very simple custard to the galettes. I ended up adding about 2 teaspoons to each galette. After 14 minutes in the oven the custard was set and they were ready to come out.



Once they cooled, we took them to Mike and LT’s for a very special dinner party. Last week Mike purchased an Ostrich egg, so we had an Ostrich egg party last night.



Check out my next post for more on that. That was a lot of egg (about 2 dozen).

The galettes were delicious.



The two favorites were the strawberry and strawberry, blueberry, peach.






The peach galettes were great as well.






The strawberries I purchased were so amazingly good that those galettes tipped the scale towards extraordinarily delicious.

Jacque’s recipe will always be my favorite, but I loved this galette recipe was well. I guess Dorie’s recipe will truly be my summer galette recipe, and I’ll save Jacque’s for the other seasons.