How To Make Any Fruit Galette

Everyone makes beautiful galettes. That’s because this rustic summer dessert is as simple as pastry dough wrapped around fresh fruit. Much like making a fruit pie, but with quite a bit less effort, turning summer fruit into a galette will make you feel like a home-cook hero. You’ll still get the same toothsome, flaky crust and tender filling of pie, but without all the fuss and worry over torn dough.

Now, there are a few pie-making rules that will help you make the most gorgeous and scrumptious galette, but don’t worry — we’ll tell you about all those too, so you can make this stone fruit stunner whenever the craving strikes.

A galette is a French pastry similar to a tart or a pie; it’s essentially pastry dough wrapped over a filling made from fruit, sugar, and butter. This free-form pie-like pastry doesn’t require a special pan — just a nice flat surface for baking.

These two components — a pie-like pastry dough and a fruit filling — combined with optimal baking is how you make a great galette. Here’s what we’ll cover.

• How to make galette dough.
• Preparing fruit for galettes.
• Preventing a soggy bottom.
• Baking the galette.

Galette dough is very much like pie dough. It starts with the combination of flour, a little sugar, butter, and just enough water to bring things together, and adds some crunch by way of cornmeal.

Galette dough can be made by hand, but it’s easily mixed in a food processor as well. Mix it similarly to how you might mix a pie dough: Combine the dry ingredients first with a few pulses and then cold cubed butter. Don’t worry about processing the butter completely — lumps of butter are welcome in galette dough. Add just enough water so the dough holds when pressed together.

Just like pies, galettes can use nearly any fruit and even lean savory with vegetables and cheese. The shorter baking time of a galette requires that the fruit be thinly sliced so the filling bakes at the same time as the crust. Once sliced, the fruit is tossed with a mixture of sugar and flour; the flour helps absorb some moisture from the fruit and thickens the filling.

The filling is also an ideal place to add other flavors. A little lemon zest, warm spices, and even fresh herbs are thoughtful additions to galette filling.

Because you can’t par-bake a galette crust to prevent the fruit’s juices from making the crust soggy, many folks brush their galette crust with egg white or make a layer of crushed cookies or cake crumbs, either of which work fine. I prefer to use a little jam thinned with water to coat the crust because it’s flavorful and it can also be used as a glaze when it comes out of the oven. A light-colored jam like peach or apricot works best.

There’s no crust crimping for a galette — instead use a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Roll the galette dough out into a round, roughly 12-inches in diameter — no need for neat edges. Pile the fruit in the center of the dough and spread out into an even layer, leaving a two-inch border.

Now fold the border up over the fruit, making sure to leave a large hole over the fruit so any steam can escape. Before baking, dot the galette with cold butter and brush the crust with an egg wash.

The galette should bake until the crust is a deep golden-brown and the fruit is bubbly and cooked. This usually takes about 30 minutes or so. Transfer the galette, parchment and all, to a wire rack and let it cool completely before slicing. Trust us — it will be worth the wait.