Hi there! Today I mBakinga BraveTart’s Pear Galette.
Why I tried this recipe
A galette usually uses a batch of pie dough to encase the fruit filling. It falls along the lines of a rustic looking free form tart since it is baked on a baking sheet and does not require a tart or pie pan.
I first learnt about BraveTart (aka Stella Parks) while searching for recipes online. After reading her award winning book, ‘BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts’ and her articles posted on SeriousEats, I was amazed by the depth of knowledge she displayed through her words. She is serious about her dessert recipes and definitely deserved all the praises for her book. Hence, I was excited to try this recipe of hers.
Experiences from trying BraveTart's Pear Galette Recipe
For this recipe, I took inspiration from Cupcake Jemma’s Shortcrust pie dough recipe and ended up using:
150g all purpose flour,
15g icing sugar,
100g salted butter, cold
1.5 tablespoon cold water
The steps for making Jemma’s shortcrust pastry are depicted in the video above. However, if you have a personal favourite pie dough recipe, you may use that instead.
The pear filling for this galette is simple to put together. Slicing the pears would probably be the hardest step when preparing the filling.
I chose to skip the spices and used a teaspoon of vanilla instead of a vanilla bean.
Overall thoughts about BraveTart's Pear Galette
The pear filling was fantastic. The natural sweetness of the pears were the main star for this galette. The shortcrust pastry I ended up making was easy to put together. However, I found it rather troublesome to roll the dough out because it ended up being quite a messy task. The crust itself did not have a pronounced buttery taste and acted more like a blank canvas for the tasty filling to shine through.
As such, I would rate Stella’s Pear galette filling recipe as follows:
(1 being the poor, and 5 being the best)
Overall, I would be keeping this pear filling recipe and finding another tart shell recipe to use.
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BraveTart's Pear Galette recipe
Equipment
- Baking tray
- Rolling Pin
Ingredients
For pastry crust
- 150 g all purpose flour 1 1/4 cups
- 100 g salted butter, cold about 7 tbsp
- 15 g icing sugar 1 tbsp
- 1.5 tbsp cold water
For pear filling
- 3 medium pears
- 15 g fine sugar 1 tbsp
- 15 g cornstarch 1 tbsp
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1/2 tbsp vinegar
- Fine salt a small pinch
- 1 tbsp milk for brushing the pastry
Instructions
For pastry crust:
- In a bowl, mix the all purpose flour and icing sugar.
- Cut the cold butter into cubes and add it to the flour mixture.
- Rub the butter into the flour by pressing the butter cubes between your fingers until they become pea sized. Try and keep the butter cubes well coated in flour at all times.
- Add the cold water to the flour butter mixture and mix it together until it starts to clump together when pressed together between you fingers. Press the dough together and shape it into a round. Transfer the pastry round to the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.
For pear filling:
- While the pastry is chilling, cut the pears into quarters. Core them, and then cut into 0.5 cm (1/2 inch) slices. Transfer the pear slices all to a large bowl.
- Add the fine sugar, cornstarch, vanilla essence, vinegar and fine salt to the pear slices and mix well.
Preparing the galette:
- When your dough has relaxed sufficiently, turn it out onto a well floured surface. Using a well floured rolling pin, hit the pastry round to flatten it slightly. Then, begin rolling the pastry round into a rough 27cm (11 inch) diameter round. If the pastry starts cracking too much you may like to pinch it together to try and close the cracks. You may dust your surface and rolling pin with flour to prevent the dough from sticking too much to the surfaces.
- Arrange the sliced pears over the dough in a roughly 25cm (10-inch) ring, tiling the slices like dominoes. Drizzle any remaining liquid from filling over fruit. With a sharp knife, cut a series of slits in the border of dough, spacing them about 12.5cm (5 inches) apart. Fold dough over pears, tugging gently so the edge of each segment tightly overlaps the one that came before. Refrigerate galette for 10 minutes. Preheat your oven to 200°C.
- Brush the galette lightly with milk and transfer to the preheated oven. Bake for 35 minutes until the galette is golden brown around the edges and bubbling in the centre. Let cool 5 minutes, then slice into wedges and serve warm, with dollops of whipped cream if desired.