Berry Gallette

I can tell I’ve hit a wall when it comes to cooking. We’re in a hot dogs, pizza and “Where do you want to order takeout for dinner?” phase. Now that I’m back to work full-time, albeit working from home, there are many afternoons where five o’clock rolls around and I haven’t even thought about dinner. I always have the best of intentions: do meal prep late at night/early in the morning when the kids are asleep, cook on the weekends and freeze meals to eat throughout the week, etc. But cooking every meal during the height of COVID-19 and stay at home orders have me burnt out.

Baking on the other hand is in full swing at my house. Which, when combined with hot dogs and pizza, really sabotages efforts to eat healthy and exercise more. Nothing like having baby number three and deciding during maternity leave to start a food blog all about desserts! My Pilates videos have taken a back seat for now, and a berry galette is riding shot gun. 

In my opinion, a sweet galette is the dessert equivalent of French girl style: effortlessly chic and simply elegant. With minimal effort, this galette makes a statement on any dining room table and is delicious after a savory meal. It’s not overly sweet either - a rustic cornmeal crust pleated over blackberries, blueberries and raspberries that have been sprinkled with sugar, butter and honey. 

Before we had kids, I could devote an entire Saturday to making strawberry cake from scratch. And while I still dream about Smitten Kitchen’s pink lady cake, I need the Rachel Ray “30 Minute Meals” version of a dessert at the moment.

I found this berry galette recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook Baking with Julia. The book is based on the PBS Master Chef series. It’s written by Dorie, but each recipe is by one of the baker-professors from the show. This galette dough and berry galette recipes are from the contributing baker Flo Braker - a former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

You’ll need to chill the dough for at least two hours before assembling your galette, so I made the dough in the morning and placed it in the refrigerator for most of the day. It takes about 15 minutes (maybe less) to prepare the dough.

The galette takes about 35 minutes to bake, and then it will need to cool for 10 minutes. I made mine right before we sat down for dinner, so it was baking as we ate. By the time our meal was done, we had warm berry goodness ready to devour.

The recipe makes enough for two 8-inch galettes. One galette was enough for four of us to have a slice. Flo Braker notes that “the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for a day or two, or it can be wrapped airtight and frozen for a month”. I kept the second portion of dough in the fridge and made another galette later in the week with our left over berries.

Here’s hoping I pull those Pilates videos out soon. We’re visiting my parents at the beach in a few weeks! In the meantime, I’m going to go make banana pudding.

Flo Braker’s Berry Galette Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 recipe of the galette dough, chilled (recipe and directions to follow)
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of honey
1 tablespoon of cold unsalted butter

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Note: The berry juice in my galettes always leak from the bottom, so I’d recommend you put a baking sheet underneath to prevent the juice from spilling and burning on the bottom of your oven.

Put the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll into an 11-inch circle. You may need to toss a little flour underneath and on top of the dough periodically. Roll the dough around your rolling pin and transfer it to the prepared baking sheet.

Spread your berries over the dough , leaving a 2”-3” border. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar on top and drizzle on the honey. Cut the butter into slivers and scatter on top of the fruit. Fold your uncovered border of dough up over the filling; let it naturally pleat as you fold it over and work your way around the galette. Dip a pastry brush in water and lightly coat the edges of the crust with it. Take the remaining teaspoon of sugar and sprinkle it on top of the crust.

Bake the galette for 35-40 minutes.
My galette took 30 minutes; every oven is different. You want the crust to be golden and crisp.

Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack, and let the galette rest for 10 minutes. Slide the galette off of the baking sheet and directly onto the cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Galette Dough (makes two)

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons of sour cream (or yogurt or buttermilk). I used yogurt.
1/3 cup of ice water
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
7 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter, cut into 6-8 pieces.

Directions:
Stir the sour cream and ice water together in a small bowl. Put the flour, cornmeal, sugar and salt in a large bowl and stir with a fork to mix. Drop the butter into the bowl with your dry ingredients and toss them once or twice to coat with flour. Take a pastry blender and work the butter into the flour until you have pieces of butter ranging in size from bread crumbs to small peas.

Sprinkle the cold sour cream mixture over the dough, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork to evenly distribute it. After all of the sour cream mixture has been added, the dough should be moist enough to stick together. If not, keep adding cold water 1 teaspoon at a time until it does.

Gather the dough with your hands and turn it out onto your work surface. Divide the dough in half. Press each half of dough into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.