Fruit Galettes
SCÉAL #05 - How to make flaky pastry and the best out of summer fruits
Hello Everyone,
Welcome to the latest edition of Scéals newsletter. Charlotte here this week.
As summer picks up speed, we will soon be surrounded by an abundance of fruit. Berry Season is just kicking off in Ireland with the first strawberries appearing in punnets at farmers markets, on supermarket shelves and roadside kiosks. In quick succession there’ll be raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries, currants and cherries galore. Not to mention delicious stone fruit from the Mediterranean, sun kissed apricots, peaches and nectarines.
If you’re like me you get giddy with the prospect of all these delicious options, after all we’ve waited the entire winter and spring for them to appear. You inevitably over purchase and over indulge. With punnets of berries going soft in the fridge sometimes it can be difficult to come up with new and exciting ways of using them up. Throwing them out would be a sin. Jamming is a wonderful tradition to carry through the seasons, capturing a moment of summer in a couple of jars. There’s the obligatory smoothies (very boring in my eyes no offence). Freezing fruit that is starting to turn is a brilliant alternative, so that they are at hand for future baking endeavours.
I’d like to share with you a simple recipe for flaky pastry that can be used for a variety of baked goods. Today, I’ll focus on using it to make galettes, and I’ll also include the recipe for the strawberry galette that was on our menu last week.
Some house keeping before I get into it. We will be baking Friday 12th, 19th + 26th May, 10am - 1pm (or sold out), The Fumbally Stables. Why Fridays? The Stables is incredibly busy with large events every weekend of May. We are being flexible with our baking schedule for this reason. We hope you can come along.
Fruit Galettes
What is a Galette
I’m talking about the French rustic style free-form tarts, topped either with a sweet or savoury filling. These should not to be confused with Breton galettes which are crepes made with buckwheat flour and popular in Brittany. Or Galette des Rois made with delicate layers of puff pastry and filled with a rich frangipane.
The word ‘galette’ comes from the Norman word gale, meaning flat cake. Traditionally they are made from a simple dough of flour, butter, water and salt. The edges are typically folded over the filling, creating a rough, free form crust. “I was captivated by their simplicity” as prominent French recipe author David Lebovitz writes. For me, galettes are elegant and unpretentious. It takes an air of confidence to serve up a charming dessert composed of so few ingredients.
I prefer to use a single variety of fruit when baking galettes. It’s the perfect way to showcase one ingredients character and complexion. Feel free to use your own creativity and the fruit you have to hand. This recipe is simply a guideline. I’ll expand on this below.
Flaky Pastry
As I trained in the US as a baker I am still guilty of using American terminology for different preparations of dough. For galettes I prefer flaky pastry. Flaky pastry is also referred to as rough-puff in Ireland and the UK, or blitz pastry in Germany and parts of Europe. Well what is it?
It is a variation of puff pastry that requires less time and fewer folds. It is a great pastry for beginners to start with before moving onto more complex doughs like puff pastry, inverted puff and croissant dough. A simple pastry dough of flour, butter, water and salt. The butter is cut into large pieces and rubbed into the flour. The different sizes and shapes of the butter pieces create pockets of fat and water throughout the dough. These humble ingredients are transformed through a series of folds and turns to create a pastry that is incredibly light, crisp and delicate.
Water within the dough and butter turns to steam in a hot oven. The butter fat and dough layered on top of each other acts as a barrier to trap pockets of steam. In flaky pastry these layers are irregular and asymmetrical as the butter is distributed evenly and various sizes. When the steam expands in the oven, it pushes against each individual layer, causing the pastry to physically puff up and creating separation between the layers.
Flaky Pastry Ingredients
Butter
When baking, I only use unsalted butter. Salted butter can contain 2% to 2.5% salt content, depending on the producer. It is excellent for buttering toast; however, not every baked item needs to be that salted, in my opinion. By using unsalted butter, I can control the final seasoning of my baked goods. Every supermarket now stocks unsalted butter. It used to be a thing of the past. Unsalted butter is very useful to have on hand in your fridge for savoury dishes.
For this recipe, keep the butter chilled. Cube it beforehand and place it back in the fridge. You want everything to be cold, cold.
If you can’t get your hands on unsalted butter, you can use salted, just omit the salt in the recipe.
Salt
As a rule, use fine sea salt for baking and flaky sea salt for garnishing. Fine sea salt distributes evenly throughout the dough, ensuring every bite is perfectly seasoned. Try seek out an Irish producer of fine sea salt. We use Oriel Sea Salt from Clogherhead in the bakery for everything we produce. It is higher in minerals than table salt and lower in sodium. Season your sweet dishes with salt as you would your savoury ones. It amplifies flavours and balances them. Salt is not just for the top of chocolate chip cookies. I season custards, creams, jams, compotes, pastry, biscuits - come to think of it, pretty much every sweet thing in the bakery has a small percentage of salt in it.
Water
Hydration: When flour and water are mixed together, water molecules hydrate the gluten-forming proteins gliadin and glutenin. Every bag of flour varies in its ability to absorb water. The age of the flour, as well as how it was milled (stone ground vs roller milled), impacts hydration. For this recipe, add the water in three stages and observe how it incorporates into the flour. It is common for me to hold back 25g of water in the recipe at the end of the mixing process. If the dough is over hydrated it can be challenging for you to roll out. It will be tacky and slack. Scale the water ahead of time and chill in the freezer.
Iced water is important for this recipe for a number of reasons.
Temperature control: The temperature of the dough is important. If the dough gets too warm too quickly the butter will start to melt. This can lead to a final baked item that is tough and form an almost greasy texture to touch and to taste. By using iced water, you can keep the temperature of the dough low, speed up the chilling time in the fridge and create a flakier bake.
Better texture: Using iced water will help create a flakier, more tender pastry.
Flour
What is soft wheat flour? You may be familiar with flour labelled as cream flour or plain flour. These are wheat flours that contain 7.5% to 11% protein. There are four types of protein in wheat flour: albumins, globulins, gliadins and glutenins. Gliadin and glutenin bond together when hydrated, forming an interlaced structure called gluten. The lower the gluten content of soft wheat flours creates a pastry that has a tender, more crumbly texture.
For this recipe, you want to use a soft wheat flour. Flour provides the structure and we are aiming for a light, crisp, flaky structure that has a delicate bite and mouthfeel. I blend 50% soft wheat flour and 50% fine white spelt flour for the recipe below. My flaky pastry recipe is adaptable, and I have had great success using a variety of different soft wheat flours. My one suggestion regarding blending flours would be to not go below 50% soft wheat flour, as you run the risk of having a bake that is brittle, heavy and chewy. The addition of finely milled wholegrain flour further heightens the final flavour.
Soft wheat flours grows especially well in Ireland. Try to source Irish grown and milled flour for this recipe and other tender bakes you make. We source our flour from two grower millers in the midlands - Oak Forest Mills and The Little Mill Company. The Little Mill Co range of flours is available in my local Supervalu and health food shop. You can also order from them online.
If fine white spelt flour isn’t available try source einkorn, emmer, finely milled whole wheat.
Lamination, Folds and Turns
In pastry, single fold (also known as a letter fold) and double fold (also known as a book fold) are terms used to describe specific techniques for folding and rolling dough to create layers. Both processes involve repetition. Scéal’s flaky pastry involves 4 single folds.
Single Fold/Letter Fold: The dough is rolled out into a long rectangular and then folded into thirds, similar to a letter. One end is folded to 1/3 on top of itself to the centre of the rectangle, then folding the other end on top. Commonly used for croissant dough, danish dough and flaky pastry.
Book Fold/Double Fold: The dough is rolled out into a long rectangle. Both ends are folded towards the centre to meet, then folded over again. This creates 4 layers of butter and 5 layers of dough. This technique is popular for puff pastry and inverted puff pastry as it builds up more layers.
Turning: The dough is rotated 90° and rolled out. I roll the dough length ways away from me. I use even pressure with my rolling pin and roll out using the full length of my arms. Don’t be afraid to lift the dough and re-flour your work surface.
Fruit, Fruit, Fruit
I mentioned earlier that I prefer to make galettes with a single variety of fruit. It’s a brilliant way to enjoy and showcase one particular fruit that is shining in that moment. Don’t let my personal preference hold you back on your creative flavours. Here are some suggestions
Rhubarb
Gooseberry
Blackberry
Tayberry
Plum
Cherry
Rhubarb and strawberry
Peach and raspberry
Apricot and peach
Mixed summer berries
Apple and pear
Blackberry and apple
Seasoning Sweet
I want you to think of the sugar in this recipe as seasoning. Sugar has a function - it adds structure, seasoning and aids the caramelisation of the fruit. My recipe below uses 10% sugar to the weight of the strawberries. How I came to this amount of sugar was through taste. You taste the savoury dishes you make for salt and acid. Begin applying the same approach to your sweet bakes.
I started with 5%, tasted the fruit and added an additional 5% from judgement. Strawberry season has just began, and the fruit hasn’t had the intense warmth of the sun to sweeten the berries. They are still delicious but need a little extra to intensify the flavour. The Irish strawberries I have tasted over the last two weeks have been on the tart side. Strawberries in late June and July will be sweeter, I guarantee you. A strawberry galette made in one months time may need slightly less sugar. Use your intuition. Taste the fruit, does it need more or less?
The same applies to switching up the type of fruit you decide to bake with. The first gooseberries of the season may be lip-smackingly sour and tangy, needing 15% sugar to balance out the flavours. Stone fruits from the Mediterranean, such as peaches, apricots and nectarines, are deliciously sweet. You may find yourself reaching for a squeeze of honey and lemon juice to balance their perfumed flesh rather than sugar in a galette.
Anna Higham puts it perfectly in The Last Bite: “Think of sugar in the same way you do of salt in savoury food. It should amplify flavours…Use sugar to make fruit taste more intense. Fruit will change through the season, however brief it may be, and will require more sugar one day and less another.” I use Anna’s book as a continuous source of inspiration and ideas throughout the year. Add it to you cook book collection!
Strawberry Flaky Pastry Galette
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to SCÉAL to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.