I am really feeling the love for the galette!
I first made one of these free form pies in April, and Rich thought it was OK, but wasn’t really feeling the love for the leeks, so thought I’d keep an eye out for other savory options.
I settled on a sweet onion and artichoke recipe (recipe to come) da Google provided from the Pillsbury Bake-Off and gathered my ingredients. The recipe called for using store-bought pie crust, but that’s not the way I roll, so I went back to April’s galette for the dough recipe. Hmmm. My butter was frozen in a solid one-pound chunk. Plan B. I thought the classic Crisco pie crust recipe would be fitting, since Crisco was a part of the whole Bake-Off recipe thingy anyway (recipe below).
To be safe, I made enough dough for a two-crust pie and had enough left over from the onion and artichoke galette that I really needed to do something with it. My mom would take leftover bits of dough, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar, twist them and bake them (we called them zut-ques, I have no idea why), but I had almost enough for another whole pie – most definitely enough for another whole galette! Enter the apples, cinnamon and sugar.
INGREDIENTS
•Pie crust*
•3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced – I used Jazz apples
•1/4 cup sugar
•1 tbsp cinnamon
•1 tbsp flour
•Butter
•1 beaten egg white
Combine the sugar, cinnamon, and flour and toss with the apples. Arrange on a rolled out dough round on an ungreased baking sheet (I did use parchment paper on the baking sheet, LOVE the parchment). Fold the edges over – don’t worry about being too neat, the whole point of a galette is that it’s not fussy. Dot the apples with a bit of butter.
Bake at 375º for 15 to 20 minutes, then pull out and brush the dough with the egg white. Bake for another five to ten minutes until the crust is golden brown.
Let cool for ten minutes or so before serving. We had ours about an hour after dinner with a slice of extra sharp cheddar. Mmmmm, tasty.
My take on Crisco Pie Crust
Single crust: Paste
1-1/2 cup flour 1/4 cup flour (from the 1-1/2 cup)
1/2 tsp salt 3 tbsp flour
1/2 cup Crisco
Double crust: Paste
2-1/2 cups flour 1/3 cup flour (from the 2-1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup water
3/4 cup Crisco
Ice Water (as needed)
Measure flour, and take out flour to make paste, set aside.
Add salt to the remaining flour, then cut Crisco in until crumbly. Add paste and mix until smooth ball forms. If this doesn’t happen, add ice water (it NEEDS to be icy-cold for best results) by the tablespoon until it does. I used 4 tbsp for a double crust recipe.
Roll out immediately. Can be frozen in pie shells. I made mine in the afternoon, rolled it out and stashed both discs on wax paper in the fridge until time to fill the galettes and pop ‘em in the oven for dinner.
This pie crust recipe has been around forever, and I’ve made it before with good result, but this time something wasn’t working – maybe because I cut the shortening into the flour in the mixer instead of my more usual food processor method – when I added the paste into the flour and shortening, it wasn’t coming together. Well, it was only JUST coming together, crumbling apart after I formed it into a ball. What to do? I went back to pastry 101 and gathered a bowl of ice cold water, which I added by the tablespoon to the mixer (on low) until the dough has gathered itself together in the bowl.
Rich thought it my best dough to date.