The Heirloom Tomato Galette I now make in my own kitchen started at a stall in Les Halles d’Avignon, where a tomato vendor named Sylvie scribbled her grandmother’s recipe onto a brown paper bag while I waited for change. I had signed up for a cooking class that week, and the instructor’s first rule was that the market came before the kitchen.
It was August. The kind of August where the stone in Provence feels like it is holding the day’s heat in storage.
Les Halles d’Avignon, on a Tuesday Morning
The class was run by a woman named Camille out of a small loft kitchen above Rue des Teinturiers. She had three rules. Buy what’s loud at the market. Salt early. Don’t move things around in the pan when they are trying to brown.
She walked our group of six into Les Halles around eight in the morning. The covered market smelled like cantaloupe and warm cardboard and the slightly metallic ice the fishmonger packs his daurade in. Sylvie’s stall was the second one on the left, banked with Cherokee Purples and Green Zebras and one variety she called Coeur de Boeuf that she said her uncle grew outside Carpentras.
I asked her, in my bad French, what she did with the ugliest ones. She tilted her head at me and asked Camille if she could borrow a pen. Then she wrote, on the side of the paper bag she had just filled with tomatoes for me, the words tarte Dijon Gruyère thym and a quick list of quantities. Her grandmother’s galette. The one she ate at the table outside her grandmother’s stone house in the Luberon every summer until she was twelve.
Back in Camille’s loft we made it together. I have not stopped making it since.
What a Heirloom Tomato Galette Actually Is
A small thing worth clearing up before you cook. The galette is one of the oldest pastry shapes in France, the word coming from the old Norman gale meaning a flat cake, with references that go back to the eleventh century. It started as a peasant way to wrap fruit or vegetables in a folded round of dough and bake it directly on a hot surface, no tart pan needed.
The savory version you find in Provence, a tarte à la tomate built on a base of Dijon and cheese with summer tomatoes on top, is the closest cousin to what we made that day. The heirloom styling is more recent. It is essentially the old French rustic form dressed up with open-pollinated heritage tomato varieties, the kind whose seeds have been saved and replanted for fifty years or more, which is mostly an American farm-to-table sensibility. Sylvie’s grandmother would have just called it the tarte of whatever was ripe that week.
Also worth saying. A galette is not a Breton galette. The Breton kind is a savory buckwheat crêpe, a completely different thing. And it is not a pissaladière either. No anchovies, no caramelized onion base. Different dish entirely.
What I Used
- 1.25 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for rolling
- 0.5 tsp fine sea salt for the dough, and another 1 tsp for salting the tomatoes
- 9 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cubed small
- 4 tbsp ice water, give or take
- 1.75 lb heirloom tomatoes in a mix of colours, I used Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, and Green Zebra
- 2 tbsp smooth Dijon mustard, not the grainy kind
- 1 cup grated Gruyère, Comté works too
- 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves stripped off the stems
- 2 tbsp good extra-virgin olive oil
- 0.25 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 egg beaten with a teaspoon of water
- 0.25 cup torn basil leaves
- a pinch of flaky sea salt to finish
Bringing the Galette Home
The first time I made it in my own kitchen was a Sunday in September, late afternoon. I had picked up the tomatoes at the Hollywood Farmers Market that morning from a grower who sets up near the second entrance. He had Brandywines the size of a softball.
I had Françoise Hardy playing while I cubed the butter, which felt on the nose but I did not care. I poured myself a small glass of the rosé I had brought back in my checked bag and ate Marcona almonds off the cutting board while the dough rested in the fridge. The kitchen window was open and a neighbor was running a leaf blower somewhere, then they weren’t, and it went very quiet.
The salt-and-drain step is the one I will fight you about. Sylvie was firm on it. Camille was firm on it. The first time I tried a tomato tart years ago I had skipped it and the bottom went soft and grey and I never quite recovered. Slice the tomatoes a quarter inch thick, lay them on a wire rack over a sheet pan, sprinkle the salt evenly, and walk away for thirty minutes. Blot the tops with a paper towel before they go anywhere near the crust.
While that happens you roll your dough on parchment, brush it with the Dijon, scatter the Gruyère, and start lifting the tomato slices into overlapping circles. Alternate colors. The point of using heirlooms is the look as much as the taste.
The thyme goes on. A drizzle of olive oil. Black pepper. Then you fold the bare edge of the dough up over the tomatoes in rough pleats. Pleats, not a neat circle. Pleats with corners. A galette is supposed to look like a hand made it, because a hand did. Camille said something at the class about embracing the spots where the cheese leaks out and caramelizes against the pan, and she was right.
Egg wash on the crust. Slide the parchment onto a preheated sheet pan in the lower third of the oven at 425 F. Thirty-five to forty minutes. The cheese will bubble through in places and the tomato edges will go a little black in the most appealing way.
Rest it fifteen minutes on a rack. Do not skip this part either. Then basil, flaky salt, and a slice.
Small Things That Matter
A few notes after making this maybe a dozen times now. Bake it on a sheet pan you have preheated in the oven, not a cold one. The base will come out crisp instead of pale. If you only have one color of tomato that is fine, but the visual flatness is the one thing you give up.
I once added a smear of crème fraîche under the cheese on a whim. It was a different dish. Good, but heavier, and the crust did not crisp the same way. I went back to mustard only.
Serve it warm or at room temperature with a small frisée or arugula salad in a sharp mustard vinaigrette. A cold glass of Sancerre. Leftovers, if there are any, are even better re-crisped at 350 F for eight minutes the next afternoon. Cold straight from the fridge, standing up at the counter, is also a valid option. I have done it.
I still have Sylvie’s paper bag pinned to my fridge. The handwriting has faded a little. The galette has not.
Heirloom Tomato Galette
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Make the pâte brisée. In a food processor, pulse the flour and 0.5 tsp fine sea salt twice to combine. Add the cold cubed butter and pulse 8 to 10 times until the mixture looks like coarse meal with a few pea-sized pieces of butter still visible.
- Drizzle in 4 tbsp ice water and pulse just until the dough begins to clump together when pinched. Add up to 1 more tbsp ice water if it seems dry. Do not let it form a ball in the machine.
- Turn the shaggy dough onto a piece of plastic wrap, press it into a 6 inch disk, wrap tightly, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 2 days.
- Slice the heirloom tomatoes into 0.25 inch thick rounds, discarding the very ends. Lay them in a single layer on a wire rack set over a sheet pan, sprinkle evenly with 1 tsp fine sea salt, and let them drain for 30 minutes. Blot the tops dry with paper towels just before assembling.
- Position a rack in the lower third of the oven, place a rimmed baking sheet on it, and preheat to 425 F.
- On a lightly floured sheet of parchment, roll the chilled dough into a rough 12 inch round about 0.125 inch thick. Slide the parchment with the dough onto a second rimless baking sheet or a flat tray.
- Brush the Dijon mustard evenly over the dough, leaving a 1.5 inch border bare. Scatter the grated Gruyère in an even layer over the mustard.
- Arrange the drained tomato slices in overlapping concentric circles over the cheese, alternating colors. Scatter the fresh thyme leaves on top, drizzle with the olive oil, and grind over the black pepper.
- Fold the bare border of dough up and over the edge of the tomatoes in rough, overlapping pleats, pressing gently to seal each fold. Embrace the rustic look.
- Brush the pleated crust generously with the egg wash.
- Carefully slide the parchment with the galette onto the preheated baking sheet in the oven. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the crust is deeply golden brown, the cheese is bubbling, and the tomato edges are lightly caramelized.
- Transfer the galette, still on the parchment, to a cooling rack and rest for at least 15 minutes. This lets the juices reabsorb and the crust set.
- Just before serving, scatter the torn basil leaves over the top and finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt. Slice into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.