I have a confession to make: I get very nervous when I cook for someone for the first time. Call it performance anxiety or just one of my many “quirks”, but I freeze up like a deer in headlights whenever I’m presented with the task of cooking for someone new. I worry that the dish isn’t tasty enough and everyone’s just too polite to say otherwise. I worry that I made some horrible mistake, like accidentally putting in salt instead of sugar, resulting in a salty dessert. I worry that somehow, without my noticing, a hideous spider got into the batter and I’m serving up spider cookies to all my friends. In short, I worry…a lot.
This same sense of worry overcame me yet again last weekend when I made an apple crostata for my friends Carlea and Geoff. After a lovely day of apple picking at Stribling Orchard, we all headed over to Carlea and Geoff’s house for a friendly apple bake off. Geoff had planned to make an apple galette, while I was shooting for an apple crostata recipe from the Barefoot Contessa herself. I bet you just now looked up at the name of the post and saw it wasn’t titled ”Apple Crostata”. You’re very perceptive, my dear reader. The reason? My crostata came out like an apple biscuit, while I swooned over Geoff’s flaky galette crust. I decided then and there to recreate it at home.
Geoff followed a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, which led to me renewing my long since lapsed subscription to the magazine (although now I subscribe to their online content only…much, much better than having stacks of magazines overtake my apartment). It also led to me getting a crash course in the fraisage technique. After cutting the butter into the dry ingredients for a dough, this technique is used to evenly distribute the butter throughout. This leads to a flakier crust and thus a winning apple bake-off dish!
Recipe: Apple Galette (adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)
Ingredients
- For the Dough:
- 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp corn starch
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 4-6 tbsp ice water
- For the Apple Filling
- 1 1/2 pounds apples, cut into 1/4 inch slices
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp fruit preserves (I used white fig and balsamic vinegar)
- Vanilla bean seeds of 1/2 vanilla bean
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp water
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Combine flours, salt, and sugar in food processor and pulse to sift the ingredients together. Add the butter (the amount from the dough ingredients) and pulse again until a crumbly texture is achieved.
- Add the ice water 1 tablespoon at a time and pulse. Repeat this process until the dough starts to form into large pebbles.
- Empty dough onto floured surface and gather into a rough rectangular mound (about 12×5 inches in size). Starting at farthest end, use heel of hand to smear small amount of dough against counter, pushing firmly down and away from you, to create separate pile of dough (flattened pieces of dough should look shaggy). Continue process until all dough has been worked. Gather the dough into another 12 by 5-inch mound and repeat smearing process. Dough should form cohesive ball after the first process.
- Form dough into 4-inch square, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until cold and firm but still malleable, 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Toss the cut apples with the vanilla bean seeds and cinnamon and set aside.
- Once the dough is sufficiently chilled, place it in the center of a large piece of parchment paper. Roll the dough out into a 16×12 inch rectangle. Cut any excess dough so a perfect rectangle is formed. Roll up 1 inch of the dough on all sides to form a border. Move the dough (still on the parchment paper) over to a baking sheet.
- Layer the apples in a row, starting from either side. Make sure the apples overlap somewhat to create a scalloped look. Dot the apples with the butter pieces (from the apple filling ingredient list) and sprinkle the sugar on top. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until the dough is a golden brown and the apples have caramelized.
Meal type: dessert
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