The leaves are turning, the air is getting cool, and apples are fresh and crisp. When I find myself thinking about baking with apples, I know that Fall is well on the way. This entry is about pastry, which has always intimidated me. Some of you know how to make an excellent pie crust, so you may want to skip over this entry. But you never know, because I had to figure it out from ground zero, trial and error, I may have found some small thing that will make yours even better.
When I was young, my mother made a very good apple pie. She didn't really measure carefully, but knew when the crust felt right to her. As I recall, it was a Crisco crust, which is the most forgiving kind, because Crisco stays solid at room temperature, which prevents gluten from forming in the pie crust. Anyway, I loved those pies, but it's been many years since she made one, and she has no interest in doing it again. I suspect that after all of these years, it would be hard to go back to it.
During my childhood, Marie Callender restaurants and pie stores began opening in California, and Marie made excellent pies of all kinds. We were particularly fond of the fresh strawberry, peach and boysenberry in season. All they were was a pie shell, loads of fresh fruit, and a fruit glaze, which we always topped with ice cream. Marie Callender's pie crust is made with butter, and is, of course, mass produced, and you can buy them in the freezer at most grocery stores. The frozen ones are a pale imitation of the fresh ones, though.
I have to say that pie crust has always seemed to require more skill than other baking, in part because there are some people who just have a knack, or who learned it from seeing, feeling and smelling it, usually from a mother or grandmother who passed on some family secret. Or at least it seemed that way to me. This was reinforced by tough, chewy, ugly pie crusts that I made over the years.
About 20 years ago, I read Judy Rosenberg's The Rosie's Bakery All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed, No Holds Barred Baking Book. Hers was the first cookbook I read that spent time talking about equipment, ingredients, and techniques. And the emphasis was on how easy it would be to make really excellent baked goods. She had really thought about how to simplify things for the home cook. So for many years, when I wanted to make an all-butter pie crust, I used her technique. She recommends using the food processor, then wrapping the dough in plastic and refrigerating before rolling out. Because one of the biggest problems for beginning bakers is working too much flour into the crust when rolling it out, she has you roll it between two pieces of saran wrap or waxed paper. Then you can peel one piece off and transfer the pastry to a pie plate. It's pretty slick, and works well.
Last August (2011), my friend Leta, and I took the week-long pastry course at Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor. Under their tutelage we made all kinds of things (croissants, puff pastry, cinnamon rolls, blueberry pie, apple strudel). When I got home, I felt more comfortable working with pastry dough, and started experimenting. So when I ran across a recipe in a magazine for this apple galette, which is in Jacques Pepin's cookbook, I was eager to try it. To my great surprise, it came out perfectly the first time, and every time since. There are a couple of little tips that make it work, but I also think he does an excellent job of anticipating the kinds of problems beginning cooks have, so that if you follow the directions exactly, it turns out perfectly.
COUNTRY APPLE GALETTE
A galette is a single crust open pie, with a rustic looking crust (great for those of us who aren't overly skilled at those fancy pie crust finishes). The dough is a classic pate brisee. While pate brisee can be made by hand, it is much easier in a food processor because it absolutely limits your ability to handle it and cause the butter and water to cause gluten to form, which is what toughens a pie crust.
Keeping things COLD: The greatest danger to your crust is the butter melting, so your goal is to start with very cold ingredients, and handle them as little as possible. About an hour before you're going to start working on the galette, measure out the flour and put it in a container in the freezer. Then measure out the butter for the pastry, cut it into 1/2" cubes, and put it back in the refrigerator. Measure out the 1 Tablespoon you will dot on the top, and cut it into 1/8" cubes and put it back in the refrigerator.
DOUGH:
1 1/2 cups (6 1/2 oz) All-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
10 Tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks)(5 oz) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" cubes
1/3 cup (2 2/3 oz) ice water
TOPPING:
4 Golden Delicious apples (1 3/4 lb)
2 Tablespoons honey (1 oz)
2 Tablespoons superfine sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into 1/8" cubes
For the dough: Put the flour, sugar, salt into a food processor and process for about 5 seconds. Then add the 10 Tablespoons of butter
Add the ice water and process for 10 seconds exactly. It should look like this:
Remove the dough from the processor and press it into a disk on a piece of plastic wrap.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, with a rack in the center.
For the Topping: Peel, halve, and core the apples. I use the #100 cookie scoop, or you can use a melon baller. Either will give you a cleaner core than attacking it with a knife, but you can do that if you don't have either gadget.
Place them cut side down on the cutting board and cut crosswise into 1/4"-thick slices.
Set aside the larger center slices and coarsely chop the end slices and any broken slices. (About half the slices should be sliced, half chopped.)
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a 12x14" rectangle.
Roll the pastry dough over the rolling pin.
Transfer to a cookie sheet.
Arrange the chopped apples on the dough, spreading them out to within 1 inch of the sides.
Sprinkle the honey over the chopped apples.
Arrange the sliced apples in slightly overlapping rows on top of the chopped apples.
Mix together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Sprinkle on top of the sliced apples.
Fold the edges of the pastry over the apples to form at least a 1" border.
Dot the apples with the small pieces of butter.
Bake for 1 hour, or until the pastry is brown and crisp and the apples tender. Be sure to cook the tart for long enough. The pastry should be dark brown. The juice from the apples will tend to leak out and caramelize, especially early in the season when they are juicier anyway.
See how flaky the crust is? Because the butter was still in little chunks when it went into the oven, it melted during the baking, giving it some of the flakiness you find in puff pastry.
Serve the tart lukewarm or at room temperature. We like it with vanilla ice cream on top.
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