There are fewer than a dozen sleeps left between us and Thanksgiving Day, and there’s so much for us to cover - casseroles and carving and cranberries and carcasses - that I figured we’d better well fortify ourselves for the week and a half ahead. Take some time today (you can make this in less than an hour) to treat yourself to an apple galette - call it practice for The Big Day, because you’ll want to add it to your menu, and lucky you, you’ll have the dough already made: today’s blitz pastry recipe makes twice what you’ll need, so you can freeze the other half as a kindness to your future self. You can eat it tonight with Succession*, another slice tomorrow with coffee, and any leftovers with Tuesday’s lunch - right around when Thanksgiving, Vol.2 will hit your inbox. Love you; see you then.
*I can’t be the only one surviving this season by eating my feelings - can I?
Apple Galette
Total time: about an hour. Cook time: 24-25 minutes.
Ingredients:
Half a batch of Rough Puff/Blitz-style pastry dough (recipe follows)
One cup of unsweetened all-natural applesauce (buy it or make it, nbd)
3 tablespoons of butter, divided
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of fine-grained salt (sea salt or pink Himalayan)
1 teaspoon of corn starch
3-6 apples - any kind, any size - peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon of real maple syrup
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 425F. Place one oven rack on the second slotting down from the top, and one from the second slotting up from the bottom (also known as “the top third” and “the bottom third” of your oven).
Lightly flour your rolling surface and rolling pin, and roll your dough into a circular shape about 1/4” thick. It will be anywhere from 10-14” across, at its widest, but it’s fine (like: really, really fine) if the shape is irregular and the edges are craggy. Transfer your circle (or “circle”) of dough to a sheet pan lined with parchment.
In a small skillet, whisk together the applesauce, brown sugar, and cornstarch, and warm over medium heat until the mixture just starts to bubble and thicken. Whisk in two tablespoons of cold butter until just thoroughly incorporated, then remove from heat and allow to cool for about 5 minutes.
Carefully scrape the cooled applesauce mixture onto the center of your dough circle. Gently spread the apple butter outward using an offset spatula or the back of a spoon, stopping the spread about an inch or so from the perimeter (imagine you’re saucing a pizza: same visual).
Arrange the sliced apples (as tightly or as loosely as you’d like) on top of the apple butter.
Fold over the outer rim of the dough one small (2-3” section) at a time, turning the sheet pan as you go and gently pressing each fold and overlap to secure. If your folds cover apple slices: that’s ok. If your folds don’t cover the apple slices: that’s ok, too. Galettes are just really kind and forgiving.
Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter with the maple syrup and brush the folded crust as well as the tops of the sliced apples. Use it all. Drizzle it on if you want to. It’s fine.
Bake galette on the bottom rack for 12 minutes, to ensure a crispy, snappy crust that’s not soggy in the center, then transfer your pan onto the top rack and cook for an additional 12 minutes. If you like some deep dark caramelized-sugar notes, flip the broiler on at the end of baking and broil for 30-90 seconds (babysit it the entire time; it will burn quickly). If you don’t want to fuck with it, it’s fine, skip it.
Let the galette cool completely before slicing; an hour, at least. This will keep at room temperature, covered, for 3-4 days.
Alternatives: you can add lemon juice/zest to the applesauce mixture, or more sugar, or some cinnamon or baking spices, or even more salt. Taste it as you cook the apple butter to tweak it as you like. Sprinkle with demerara or turbinado if you want. It’s your party.
Rough Puff/Blitz Dough
This is the same dough we made and used (in total) for Apple Pie, so if you made that - hooray! You’re a veteran. To make this (or any) galette with this dough, you’ll only need half. However. Don’t halve the ingredients: it’s more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth. Instead, freeze the other half of the finished dough. You could use it for cheese straws, a single-crust pie or quiche, tiny tender crackers for a cheese board, some easy cruffins, or, simply, another galette.
Ingredients:
300g of all-purpose flour (2.5 cups), plus extra for dusting
1 tablespoon of white sugar (eyeball it is fine)
1 teaspoon of fine salt (sea salt or pink Himalayan - again, eyeball is fine)
10oz of very cold butter (2.5 sticks), cut into roughly 1/2” cubes
1 cup of ice water, divided (you won’t use it all)
Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.
Add the cubed butter and toss gently with your hands until each cube is coated. Then, quickly (so as not to warm the butter too much) but carefully (to ensure that each piece of butter only gets handled once), work through the mixture and pinch each cube of butter once to smash it flat. The pieces will be big and rough; that’s ok. Smash smash smash, one time each.
Once all of the butter has been smashed, add in 1/3 cup of ice water and, using one hand, fold the water into the buttered flour until a crumbly dough forms. Add more water 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough is completely cohesive - no remaining areas of dry flour in the bowl - but not overly wet or sticky. (FWIW: in my very dry house, I usually need 2-3 additional tablespoons of water; if yours is more humid, you’ll likely use less.)
Pat dough into a tidy ball (it will not be smooth - it just shouldn’t be sticky), wrap in plastic, and tuck it into the fridge for 25-30 minutes. (This would be a great time to prep your filling.)
After its rest, unwrap the dough and place on a lightly floured surface, and roll into a rough square about 1/2” thick. Fold in thirds horizontally, to create a long rectangle that’s three layers thick, and then fold this rectangle into thirds vertically to create a small, thick square that is now nine layers thick. (If that visual doesn’t work for you: imagine a tic-tac-toe board on your rolled dough, and you’re folding along each set of lines to stack the 9 squares.) Roll again to a similar thickness, repeat folds, and marvel at how quickly you just created 81 (!!!) flaky layers.
If your kitchen is cold or you have a marble/granite/cold counter-top, and if you worked quickly, you can now cut your dough square in half and proceed to carefully roll one half into your circle for the galette, while freezing or otherwise dispatching the other half.
Alterations: this crust recipe does not work as well with vegan butter or with shortening, and I have not tested it with gluten-free flour substitutes, so I recommend that if you need to make either accommodation you use a different recipe entirely. Other crust/pastry recipes are amenable to swaps but this one just ain’t.