Hello Bakers,
The other day my dryer broke beyond repair - part of it's demise had been my fault. I hadn't read the manual (which I will when I buy my next dryer) and did not realize I needed to clean a more hidden compartment. Four years of sludge build up and it was done.
So the experience set me on a week long tear of cleaning and maintaining my remaining appliances, including my two freezers. Cleaning a freezer can resemble an archaeological dig.
So much can get lost in there, especially bits of dough...
Bakers, you know what I am talking about. How many of us cannot bear to throw even the smallest bit of dough away. We tell ourselves, after carefully wrapping up the small piece that we WILL use it for something.
In cleaning my upright freezer (not frost free - big mistake) I found lots of dough bits, a collection of streusel, shrimp consomme, and the collection of Anson mills grains that Chef bought last summer.
I consolidated the streusel, put a chunk of flaky pie dough in the refrigerator to thaw and organized the rest of it. The topic of this post is what can you do when your leftover flaky pie dough is not big enough for a pie....the perfect answer is to make a galette.
Galettes are French in origin. The name is the same in French and English. A galette is a pie's more relaxed and rustic cousin. There are no strict rules with galettes, if you have dough, fruit, sugar and cornstarch that is all you need.
Any fruit will work but the fruits of Spring and Summer are the best. I had strawberries on hand. These berries were not perfect but still perfectly ok to use. I had the galette baking in my Wolf Gourmet (aka Easy-Bake) oven in about 20 minutes. In 30 minutes, it had finished baking. You can really use any fruit just adjust the sugar if the fruit is very sweet.
Happy Baking!
Colette
Strawberry Galette
Equipment:
¼ sheet pan – for a larger galette you will need a ½ sheet pan
Parchment paper
Rolling pin
Pastry wheel
Pastry brush
ngredients:
6-8 ounces Frozen dough – thawed, flaky pie, croissant and danish can be used
1 pint Strawberries, rinsed, dried, stemmed and quartered
2 ounces Sugar
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1 teaspoon Vanilla bean paste or extract
2-3 ounces streusel – from the freezer
1 ounce (approx.) Egg white, whisk so that it is smooth
Sanding or crystal sugar
Flour for dusting and rolling out the dough
1. Line the quarter sheet pan with parchment paper.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Quarter the strawberries and toss with sugar, cornstarch and vanilla
4. Roll the dough out to a circle, 1/8 of an inch thin.
Mine was 11” in diameter
5. Sprinkle a ¼” layer of streusel in the center of the dough circle leaving an 1 ½” border.
Thin layer of streuel - it absorbs excess juice
6. Using a slotted spoon, spoon the strawberries on top of the streusel, there will be extra liquid left in the bowl – that’s ok. There will be enough liquid left on the berries to thicken the liquid.
Berries in center on top of streusel
7. Pleat the dough over the berries.
Pleating dough
8. Brush edge with egg white and sprinkle with sanding sugar.
Ready to bake
9. Bake at 350 using convection for the first 15 minutes if you have it. If not then keep the setting at 350.
Start checking at 25-30 minutes. The dough should be golden brown and the filling should look thickened.
Finished Galette
10. Let the galette cool a little before serving so that the filling firms up.