Tuesdays with Dorie—Summer Fruit Galette

A galette is supposed to be rustic, and mine certainly looks that way! Baked in a brown bag, filled with a mixture of summer fruits including saskatoons, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries, drizzled with pastry cream, and served with ice cream, this is a delicious and easy dessert.

Galettes are usually round, flat, free-form tarts with a thin, crispy crust that’s been folded over onto the fruit.

By its very nature, a galette is rustic and not meant to be perfect. It's a round of pie dough folded over the edges of a filling, and what makes it so charming are its pleats, bends and wrinkles.
– Dorie Greenspan –

The pastry for this galette is one we’ve made before for the blueberry pie. I just pile all the ingredients on the counter and pull it together with as much ice water as needed. I’ve made it several times, and it’s flaky and tender and holds up every time. A sprinkle of ground graham crackers before adding the filling helps soak up the juices that ooze out of the fruit during cooking.

Saskatoons

Blueberries and Saskatoons

It’s saskatoon season here in Saskatchewan. At the farmers’ market, pails are brimming with big, delicious berries. Although saskatoons look like blueberries, they taste very different. Saskatoons have a thicker skin and thicker juice.

Saskatoons grow on deciduous shrubs and are common in the prairie provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta). They are classified as a pome, or apple, and not a berry and have a variety of names: service berry, may cherry, june berry, june bush, shad bush, shadblow, shad berry, shad blossom, shad wood, sugar pear, Indian pear, grape pear, lancewood, box wood.

I only know of one farm in the Ottawa region that grows saskatoons, Ovens Berry Farm, so I feel lucky to be in the heart of the harvest here in Saskatchewan. I knew I couldn’t get away without tossing some handfuls into this summer fruit galette.

Saskatchewan, the province, got its name from the Saskatchewan River, which the Cree called Kisiskatchewani Sipi, meaning “swift-flowing river” and Saskatoon, the city, got its name from the edible berry native to the area, which the Cree called mis-sask-guah-too-minute, meaning “wild berries”.

Prairie Cherry Spread

Since I’m visiting Saskatchewan, I found some local cherry spread (not called jam since the Canadian Food Inspection Agency thought it didn’t have enough sugar in it to be labeled a jam). It’s made by Prairie Cherry, a local organic orchard who is bringing fruits to the harsh climates of the prairies. They’ve crossed the Mongolian cherry (Prunus fruticosa) with the Sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) to create a wonderful fruit that is perfect as the jam-base for this galette.

Brown-baggin’ it
I saw a picture in the latest Cooking Light magazine of a galette sitting on a paper bag, and I thought it would be a neat idea to try baking Dorie’s galette in a paper bag. The shape of the bag helped the galette hold its form, although in a rustic way. I should have made the sides of the pastry rectangle higher to hold the juice in better.

I also tried making the galettes in a round coffee filter, but this paper was too flimsy to hold its shape so I plopped these inside a ramekin before baking.

Recipe

You can find the recipe for Summer Fruit Galette in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Michelle from Michelle in Colorado Springs who chose the recipe for this week.

Tasting Notes
I love the versatility of this dessert since any bowl of fruit in season will work. The drizzle of pastry cream in this recipe took this galette up a notch. Once again, the pastry was crispy and flaky and one I’ll use for pie-baking in the future. This bumbleberry galette filled with summer fruits is a perfect dessert.

Recipe for Next Week (August 5)
Black and White Banana Loaf on page 232 chosen by Ashlee of A Year in the Kitchen.