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Sunday, July 12, 2009

blueberry galette.

galette

i failed at pie crust when i was working in the test kitchens of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. the TK director tutored me privately on technique but it was no go. i couldn't do it right to save my life, so she gave the pie crust things to anyone else in the kitchen so long as it wasn't me.

fine by me.

i was fully prepared to discuss pie crust failure here, but my galette was a complete success. i did not expect this at all. in fact, it was so good i've decided that the galette is the most delicious way to enjoy blueberries ever & i'm ready to galette berries all summer long.

Notes:

a galette recipe is pretty standard, but still i pulled bits & pieces from several different sources to get what i want. i've been swapping 5-spice in for cinnamon everywhere & did so here. i'm totally convinced that 5-spice makes just about everything better.

one of my major complaints about galettes is that the crust is usually tough, there's entirely too much of it in comparison to the fruit & it's not sweet enough. since Gale Gand's recipes have rescued me more times than i can count, i pulled her recipe for pate brisee & bumped the sugar up just a bit. the pastry baked up lightly sweet, tender & flaky & with 1 1/2-2 cups of blueberries per tart, everything was in perfect proportion.


Pate Brisee
adapted from Gale Gand in butter, sugar, flour, eggs

Yield: 2 (7") galettes

2 1/4 cups AP flour
12 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut in pieces
1 egg
1 Tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 -2 Tbsp cold milk

Put the flour on a silpat or other flat surface and make a well in the center of the flour. Put the butter, egg, sugar, salt and 1 Tbsp of the milk in the well.

Combine by pushing aside the wet ingredients with one hand and sweeping the flour into the well and/or over the wet ingredients with the other. If that doesn't work very well (it didn't for me), do whatever is necessary with 2 hands to get the dough to start coming together. If necessary, use the rest of the milk.

With the heel of your hand, knead the dough by pushing it against the flat surface and away from you. Don't overdo it.

Form the dough into a disk (or split in half if baking 2 galettes). Wrap in plastic and chill for 2 hours for 1 galette, 1 1/2 hours for 2 galettes.

When ready to bake, pull the dough out of the refrigerator & let rest at room temperature for 5-10 minutes, or until you can roll it out into a circle without the edges cracking.

Filling

3-4 cups blueberries*, rinsed and dried
3 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp five-spice (optional) - combine with sugar
2 Tbsp chilled butter, cut into small pieces

1 Tbsp milk or cream
2 tsp sugar

Heat oven to 350.

Roll the pate brisee out between 2 sheets of plastic wrap to a 9-10" circle. Transfer to a silpat lined baking sheet.

Place 1 1/2 to 2 cups blueberries in the center of each dough circle, leaving about a 2 1/2" border. Sprinkle blueberries with the 3 Tbsp sugar.

Bring the edges of the dough up around the blueberries. Pleats will form as you go.

Dot filling with the pieces of butter.

Brush dough with milk or cream. Sprinkle the crust of each galette with 1 tsp sugar.

Bake 27-30 minutes or until pastry is just browning at the edges.

Cool on a rack.

blueberry galette

*most recipes call for 3 cups of blueberries, but that looked a little scant to me, so i used approximately 4 cups of blueberries total.

1 comments:

kate said...

it's *beautiful*!