If you want a pastry for dessert, a fruit galette is your fastest way to get there. The pastry is very easy to make, and then you can just roll out the dough, add chopped fruit or berries, bake, and voilà, dessert is made! A slightly richer and more elegant version can be made if you have time to make crème pâtissière (pastry cream).
Fruit galettes can be made with just about any kind of fruit, but you need to be aware of how wet the fruit will get while it bakes to avoid the dreaded soggy bottom. You don’t have to worry about apples, but practically everything else will leak a bit. For stone fruit such as peaches and nectarines you can mix equal amounts of flour, sugar, and ground almonds together (a tablespoon or two, each) and sprinkle the mixture on the pastry before you add the fruit. Berries can get very runny, as can rhubarb and plums (a particularly delicious galette choice). For those, toss with sugar and a tablespoon of cornstarch until the moisture from the fruit has made it transparent. And you can use some of the almond mixture under especially runny berries such as raspberries and blackberries, in addition to the cornstarch.
Another way to isolate fruit juices from the pastry is, oddly, to spread a layer of thick pastry cream over the pastry before adding fruit. It takes a bit more preparation, but the result is a worthwhile increase in lusciousness, and turns a simple apple tart into a very fine piece of patisserie. If you do use pastry cream, you will have to make it a few hours ahead of time and let it cool completely.
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Ingredients for Pastry Cream (optional)
2 egg yolks
3 1/2 tablespoons (scant 1/4 cup) sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk
Directions for pastry cream
- Mix egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, and a small splash from the milk in a bowl and whisk to blend.
- Scald milk in a small saucepan. Just before it starts to bubble, pour over the egg mixture in a thin stream while whisking, to prevent the hot milk from cooking the egg yolks.
- Return this mixture to the saucepan and continue to whisk over medium-low heat until the cream thickens. Eventually, you will see and hear “bloops” erupting from the cream. You want to cook for only one minute more and then take off the heat. Pour into a clean bowl (you can quickly wash the one you used for the eggs) and place a layer of plastic wrap over the surface to prevent a skin for forming. Place somewhere cool for a few hours to set completely.
Ingredients
1 recipe galette pastry
approximately 4 cups fruit
a few tablespoons sugar, depending on fruit sweetness
1 tablespoon cornstarch (optional, see notes above)
1 – 2 tablespoons each of flour, sugar, and ground almonds
OR 1 recipe pastry cream, above
coarse or granulated sugar and milk, for milk wash
Directions
- Heat oven to 400ºF. Prepare a baking sheet with some parchment paper. You can bake on the sheet, or a pizza stone. If using the latter, make sure it has thoroughly heated for 30 minutes.
- Prepare fruit of your choice. Apples should be peeled, cored, and sliced very thinly. Peaches should be peeled, and then sliced off the pit in thin wedges. Nectarines, the same, though don’t need to be peeled. Plums should be halved to remove the pit, and then quartered. Large berries such as strawberries should be halved or quartered, depending on size. Rhubarb should be cut in pieces the same length as width of stalks, on the diagonal.
- Roll out pastry into a circle of about 15 inches/40 cm. Transfer to parchment paper. If using pastry cream, spread out into a circle about 12 inches/30 cm in the centre. If not, sprinkle sugar/flour/almond mixture in a circle of the same size.
- If using berries, rhubarb, or plums, sprinkle cornstarch over and enough sugar to sweeten (more for rhubarb and plums than sweet berries). Toss fruit around in the bowl until cornstarch is completely dissolved. Transfer to pastry and spread out in an even layer. If using apples or stone fruit, lay out slices in an attractive pattern and sprinkle with some sugar.
- Take a piece of the pastry from the edge and fold over the fruit to make a pastry border 1 – 2 inches (2 – 5 cm) wide. Keep folding and pleating until the border is complete. Brush the border with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
- If using a pizza stone, slide the parchment onto it. Otherwise, just place baking sheet in oven. Bake for 30 minutes and check for doneness. The pastry edge should be golden brown, with no pale spots.