This may be the shortest intro in Hungry Mouse history. We’re out the door in a few minutes on our way to a party, but here’s what we’re bringing.
A galette is basically a rustic tart. It’s free-form and halfway open faced, so you get a peek at the gooey, caramelized fruit that’s hiding inside.
This particular galette is made with two kinds of apples and a little bit of my mom’s homemade peach jam. It gets a tiny bit of bite from a small amount of ground ginger.
It does just as well at an nice dinner party as it does at an autumn brunch table.
A note on the pan
I use a 16-inch round pizza pan. If you don’t have one of those, that’s OK. You can also make it on a standard, rectangular sheet pan—your finished tart will just wind up more oblong than round.
Rustic Apple Galette
10 Tbls. butter, cut into chunks + 1 Tbls. butter (for dotting the top before it bakes)
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup cold water
5 cortland apples
2 granny smith apples
1/2 a lemon
2 Tbls. peach jam
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1 egg
1 Tbls. cold water
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Fit your mixer with the paddle beater. Cut a piece of parchment paper that’s long enough to cover your pan, with a little hanging over the edges. Set the pan and paper aside.
Make the crust
Put the flour and salt in the bowl of your mixer. Cut the butter up into small-ish pieces and add it to the flour. Mix on high just until the butter and flour just come together and form little balls.
If you don’t have a mixer, you can do this by hand with a pastry cutter and a little elbow grease. The goal is for your dough to look about like this:
Next, drizzle the water in. Do this slowly, as your mixer is running on medium-high. Try to get the water close to the center of the bowl so it mixes evenly and doesn’t puddle on the edges.
When all the water is in the bowl, flip the mixer up to top speed for about 15 seconds. Turn it off. Your dough should look about like this:
Put a piece of plastic wrap onto your counter or cutting board. Take the dough out of the mixer bowl and gather it together into a ball. Put it on the plastic wrap and smoosh it down so it looks about like this:
Wrap the plastic around it tightly so it� doesn’t dry out. Stick it in the fridge to chill.
Prepare the apples
While your dough is chilling, peel and cut up your apples. I don’t have one of those nifty apple peeler/slicers, so I take the peels off with a paring knife, then chunk them up into fairly even-sized pieces.
This is a rustic tart, so they don’t have to be completely uniform. You just want them about the same size so they cook evenly.
Squeeze the lemon half over the apple slices. Stir to coat the apples with lemon juice to keep them from browning.
When your apples are all cut up, you should wind up with about 8 cups of fruit. If you’re a little over or under, don’t worry about it. Like I said, this is a rustic tart.
Put the apples in the fridge and take the dough out.
Roll out the crust
Unwrap the dough and put it in the middle of the piece of parchment paper. Slip the pan out from underneath and set it aside. You’re going to roll the crust out right on the parchment paper.
Roll the dough out until it stretches to the edges of your parchment paper. It should be thin, but not so paper-thin that you won’t be able to handle it easily to form your tart.
Don’t worry if your edges are a little raggy. You can tidy them up later, when you form the tart.
Your dough should be maybe an eighth of an inch thick. For comparison, here’s my rolled dough next to the tip of a paring knife.
Assemble your tart
When your dough is rolled out, put the peach jam in the center.
Using a spatula or your hand, spread the jam evenly out over the dough, being sure to get some on the edges.
When the jam is spread, slip the pan back under the parchment paper.
Grab your apples out of the fridge. Add the sugar and ground ginger to them and stir to coat well.
Pile the apples in the center of your rolled dough.
Being careful not to rip the dough, begin to flip the edges of the dough up over the apples.
Turn the dough up bit by bit to form the crust. Keep going until you’re back where you started. If you make any tiny rips in the dough, don’t fret. You can fix them with the egg wash in the next step.
When your crust is formed, your tart should look about like this:
Finish it up and bake
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and cold water. Paint your crust liberally with it.
This is your chance to fix any raggy pieces or holes you may have made in the dough.
Smooth any rough spots out with your finger and a little bit of the egg wash. If you’ve made a hole, patch it up with a little piece of dough (just rip off a bit from an edge and smooth the spot over), some egg wash, and gentle pressure from a finger or two.
The egg acts basically like glue, and is going to seal your crust. This will help keep any of the tart’s juices from leaking out through any tiny cracks in the crust as it bakes.
Dot the top of the apples you can see with 1 tablespoon of butter, sliced thinly.
If you have any drips of peach jam left on the parchment paper, wipe them off with a damp paper towel. You don’t want the sugar in the jam on the paper to burn.
Put it in the oven and bake for about 1 hour at 375 degrees.
After about an hour, your tart should look about like this:
Serve hot or at room temperature with a scoop of rich vanilla ice cream.
***
Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse�/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.
