Peach and Raspberry Galette

Happy Father's Day!

This morning, I made homemade apple turnovers (no sugar added) and poached eggs over sausage patties and a bed of greens for the family. I'll share those photos sometime in the future, but today, I'm sharing the photos of (and recipe for) the peach & raspberry galette I made for my dad's birthday, just a few days ago.

I'm veeery proud to say that I've finally made a good pie crust. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've tried to make pie crust and have been left with a tough, chewy, hard shell instead of a flake-y, tender crust. I'll include as many detailed tips as possible for making the crust below!

Do you see those flakes and layers?! 

Here are my tips for making great pie crust:

1. Make sure your butter is COLD. I cut a cold stick of butter into small chunks and then stick the chunks in the freezer for at least 10 minutes to firm up before cutting the butter into the dough. (Alternatively, you can use a frozen stick of butter and grate it into the flour)

2. Make sure your water is COLD! Keep it in the freezer with/without ice cubes until you add it into the dough.

3. It's okay to have larger chunks of butter in your dough -- in fact, you want to strive for that! Make sure that your pieces of butter are no smaller than the size of peas -- I played it safe and stopped cutting the butter into the dough when the pieces of butter were about half the size of pennies!

4. Don't use a food processor to make your dough - this is the only way that I've made pie crust in the past, and I always ended up with an overmixed dough that became a tough pie crust. Use a fork, your finger tips, or a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dough and to mix the ice water into the dough.

5. Adding too much water will make the crust tough (it's the fat from the butter that makes pie crust so tender and flake-y). Add just enough ice water to bind the dough; I also played it safe and left the dough very crumbly when I wrapped it up and refrigerated it. When I was rolling out the dough, I found that the dough was too crumbly, so I sprinkled some water with my fingers over the dough to help bind it together and make rolling it out easier. 

6. Work veery quickly when you roll the dough out! You don't want the dough to sit out for very long and have the bits of butter all melted. It's the chunks of butter that add air to the pie crust and make it flake-y when the water from the cold butter quickly evaporates upon meeting a hot oven. 

7. I let the galette sit in the freezer for 10 minutes to chill before baking! This helped to ensure that the pie crust was very cold, which is a key to the temperature contrast that's responsible for flakiness. 

Recipe: Peach and Raspberry Galette

By: Hannah Claudia

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pie crust dough (I used this recipe)

2 peaches, peeled and cut into slices*

handful of raspberries

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon of cornstarch

1 egg + 1 tablespoon of water (egg wash)

(opt) handful of almonds

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1. Preheat your oven to 400*F.

2. Roll the pie crust out to about 1/8" thick or so

3. Add the peaches and raspberries to the center of the pie crust, leaving a 1" border

4. Fold the edges of the crust into the center (overlapping is okay!)

5. Brush the egg wash onto the crust

6. Transfer the galette to a baking sheet lined with greased wax paper.

7. Stick the galette in the freezer for 10 minutes.

8. Bake the galette for 30-45 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling.

9. (opt) Toast almonds in a small pan over medium heat (keep an eye on this!) until fragrant and lightly toasted. Top the galette with the toasted almonds.

*If your peaches and raspberries are very ripe and juicy, you should add about 2-3 more tablespoons of cornstarch. My peaches were not very juicy at all, so I didn't need to do this!

xoxo, han