Galette Tips and Techniques

Galette tips and techniques are useful year-round. Free-form pies (galettes) work with sweet fillings or savory ones. No matter what season you’re in and whether you prefer sweet or savory, you can always make a free-form pie.

As summer winds down, consider making a fruit galette before summer fruit season ends. Then take the techniques for a galette into your repertoire, for any sweet or savory free-form pie your heart (or the season) dictates.

I’ve written about galettes many times before. Consider my apple rhubarb galette or my salted apple galette. I filled a galette with berries and mixed apricots and plums in another. I’ve even done other peach galettes in years past. As you may notice, all these galette adventures were sweet.

Next up I’m going to try a savory galette. Will it be a tomato-based galette, while tomatoes and fresh basil are still in season? Or should I try a more unusual one, with leeks and kale? In any event, the galette technique is useful for so many variations.

But before we leave sweet galettes, let me give you my galette tips and a bonus recipe for a peach galette at the end of the post.

Galette Tips

• Use dough that stands up to the task. I like Cathy Barrow’s all-butter dough, but it’s not the only one you can use.
• Refrigerate or freeze dough frequently. Even when your kitchen is not too hot, refrigerating or freezing the dough makes it easier to work with. Cool it several times as you make the galette.
• Prevent filling from leaking or wetting the dough too much. I’ll give you techniques for doing this in the post below.
• Leave space at edges for folding the pleats. A galette needs a rim to hold in the filling. Let me show you how to fold the pleats – it’s easy.
• Don’t sweat the small stuff. Turn on your favorite music. Be creative with your fillings. Most importantly – enjoy your galette adventures.

How to Make Galette Tips Work for You

• Which dough recipe to use?
  • Use a dough recipe you’re comfortable making. If you do not have a favorite, consider using this one (sugar-less) or find a galette-friendly dough (with or without sugar) in a cookbook or online.
  • Make sure your dough is sturdy. If it’s too delicate, the bottom will get soggy too easily and the dough will be difficult to maneuver. Remember that a galette is free-form and there is no pie pan to hold it in place.
  • Dough should be thick enough to let you fold the pleats all around the rim.
  • Some recipes call for store-bought puff pastry dough – that’s fine, but not traditional and more difficult to work with than “regular” pie dough.
• Refrigerate the dough and refrigerate or freeze the galette.
  • After the dough is made, refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight to let it rest.
  • After rolling the dough out into a large circle, put the circle on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and refrigerate or freeze it until it is cool. If it’s too hard to work with after that, let it rest on the counter for a few minutes. However, do not let it get soft.
  • Once you have formed the galette, refrigerate or freeze the finished product for at least 20-30 minutes before baking.
• Preventing filling “juices” from leaking or wetting the dough too much.
  • If your filling has “juices” (as a peach or other fruit filling might), pour out the excess before you fill the galette. Then do either or both of the following.
  • Paint the place where filling will go with egg white to form a barrier to keep liquid from leaking or wetting the dough.
  • Add cracker crumbs to the bottom of the galette where the filling will go, in order to soak up any “juices” that might otherwise leak. You can do this after pouring out the excess. Consider using sweet crackers like graham crackers for a sweet galette while a savory galettedoes well with neutral or herb-infused crackers.
• Leave space for folding the pleats.
  • A galette keeps the filling in the center of the circle of dough with pleats. When you fill the galette, make sure the filling stays in the center and there is an empty ring around the outside of the dough
  • It does not matter whether your pleats are wide or narrow, or whether there are many of them or just a few. As long as they go all around the circle and keep the filling inside, the pleats will work as they should.
• Have fun.
  • I highly recommend putting on music. Or listen to an audiobook, podcast, or a radio program.
  • Try a new way to fill a galette. Use a recipe as a template, not a list of requirements.
  • Above all, enjoy yourself.