There’s a cookbook on my kitchen shelf with a broken spine and a stained paper napkin sticking out of page 184. The cookbook is a French baking book my mother gave me years ago, dense and a little stern, full of weights in grams and no apologies.
The napkin, though, is the actual recipe I cook from. The cookbook is just the place I keep it safe. I have been making the thing on that napkin once a week since March, and I think I finally have it right. Or close enough that I will stop fiddling for now.
A Loire Valley Napkin in My Cookbook
The napkin came home with me from a homestay in the Loire Valley three summers ago. My host, Geneviève, made the galette one afternoon while I was supposed to be napping upstairs. I came down because the kitchen smelled like browned butter and warm strawberries, and she shrugged and slid me a piece without ceremony, the way you might hand someone a spare key.
When I asked for the recipe she scribbled it on the napkin in pencil. The kind of pencil that smudges. There is a grease ring where the hot pan touched the paper while she wrote, and a small tear in one corner. I tucked the napkin into the back of the French baking book when I got home, and the book has gotten more stained than the napkin since then.
For a long time I treated it as a curiosity rather than a working document. Then one weekend in March I actually followed it and realized Geneviève had been generous with her measurements. A spoon of flour, apparently, was not the same size as my spoon. That is where the obsession started.
Why a Galette and Not a Pie
A galette is the rustic French cousin of a tart. Free-form, single-crust, dough folded loosely over the fruit in pleats. The name comes from the old Norman word gale, meaning flat cake, and the form goes back to the 13th or 14th century in French home kitchens. It is not a failed pie. The imperfect, slightly drunken edge is the point.
Worth saying out loud, because people get this confused. A dessert galette is not the same thing as the savory buckwheat galette bretonne you get in Brittany. Different animal entirely, different region, different meal.
The strawberry and rhubarb pairing is newer. Rhubarb only became a dessert ingredient in 18th-century Europe, once sugar got affordable enough to balance the tartness. The pairing took hold in England and in 19th-century America, where rhubarb earned the nickname pie plant. And in case it has not come up yet at a dinner party, rhubarb is technically a vegetable. A stalk. We just keep treating it like fruit because it is delicious that way.
What I Used
- 1.25 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 9 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 0.5 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar for the dough, half a cup more for the filling
- 4 tablespoons ice water, plus another spoon if it looks dry
- 2 cups fresh rhubarb, sliced into half-inch pieces
- 2 cups strawberries, hulled and quartered
- 2.5 tablespoons cornstarch, do not skimp
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest and 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1 egg beaten with a teaspoon of water, for the wash
- 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar for the crackly finish
Months of Tinkering with This Strawberry Rhubarb Galette
The first few I made were soupy, because Geneviève’s napkin said flour and flour was not enough. Cornstarch fixed it. Two and a half tablespoons, level, no rounding down. Do not skip this step. Strawberries throw off a tremendous amount of juice and rhubarb has almost no pectin of its own.
The kitchen looks the same every time now. Late afternoon, the west window throwing a long orange stripe across the counter, butter cubes scattered on a plate like dice, the food processor with a smear of dough on the lid. Whatever record I forgot to flip an hour ago, currently a Bill Evans I keep meaning to put away. My fingers go pink from the rhubarb. The strawberry juice gets everywhere, including, somehow, the ceiling once.
I roll the dough directly on a sheet of parchment now instead of on the counter, because I got tired of scraping. I bake on the lower rack. That one I learned the hard way after two galettes came out with slightly damp bottoms, which is exactly as sad as it sounds. And I make myself wait the full thirty minutes before cutting, because if you slice early the juices run and you are left with a slice and a puddle.
Cold butter is non-negotiable. If your dough softens at any point during shaping, chill it again for fifteen minutes and move on. The flake is built into those cold flat slabs of butter, and you cannot fake it later in the oven.
Small Twists Worth Trying
A teaspoon of vanilla extract folded into the fruit is a quiet improvement. Not necessary, but nice. I have swapped the lemon zest for orange when the lemons looked tired, and it tilts the whole thing toward something darker and more grown-up. Once I used half strawberries and half raspberries, and the color came out almost theatrical.
If you happen to find pale, perfumed white strawberries at a farmers market in late May, swap a handful in. They taste a little like roses, which sounds insufferable but is just true. A dollop of crème fraîche on top while the galette is still warm is the way Geneviève served it. Vanilla ice cream is also the way. I am not going to pretend there is a wrong answer here.
The napkin still lives in the back of that cookbook. It is more grease than paper at this point, and I should probably scan it before it disintegrates. But I like that I have to handle it gently every time I want to make this, because it keeps the whole thing feeling like a small ceremony instead of just a recipe.
Strawberry Rhubarb Galette
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Make the pâte brisée. Pulse the all-purpose flour, salt, and 1 tsp granulated sugar in a food processor until combined. Scatter the cold butter cubes over the flour and pulse 8 to 10 times, until the butter is broken into pieces ranging from pea-sized to small flat flakes.
- Drizzle in 4 tbsp of ice water and pulse just until the dough begins to clump but is not yet a solid mass. If it looks dry, add another 1 tsp of ice water at a time, up to 2 tsp.
- Turn the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, gather it into a 5 inch disc, wrap tightly, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.
- While the dough chills, combine the rhubarb, strawberries, 0.5 cup granulated sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, and lemon juice in a large mixing bowl. Toss thoroughly and let macerate for 15 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400 F and position a rack in the lower third. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- On a lightly floured parchment sheet, roll the chilled dough into a rough 13 inch round about 0.125 inch thick. Slide the parchment with the dough onto the prepared baking sheet.
- Stir the fruit one more time, then mound it in the center of the dough, leaving a 2 inch border all around. Spoon over only enough of the accumulated juices to moisten the fruit, leaving most of the liquid in the bowl.
- Fold the dough border up and over the fruit in 5 to 6 loose, overlapping pleats, leaving the center of the filling exposed. Press the pleats gently to seal.
- Brush the exposed pastry generously with the egg wash, then sprinkle the entire crust with the turbinado sugar.
- Bake on the lower rack for 40 to 45 minutes, until the crust is deeply golden and the filling is bubbling thickly in the center. If the edges brown too quickly, tent loosely with foil after 30 minutes.
- Slide the parchment with the galette onto a wire rack and let rest for at least 30 minutes so the juices thicken and set before slicing.
- Cut into 8 wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.