Hello Angels. What a bizarre and scary time we are living through. I hope you are healthy, in quarantine (if you have the privilege to be), and being generous and kind to yourself as you read this. As soon as Romaine and I began staying home (in France we started on March 16th), I resolved to be as productive as possible and create lots of content for Le Dinner Party, write multiple moving and groundbreaking essays about cuisine/my transition into the culinary world, and maximize my time! However, these things did not happen. I started strong. Week one: I cooked up a storm, wrote, signed up for Master Class, video conferenced hard, and walked miles every day. Week two: it was an up and down battle. Some days I struggled to get out of bed; some days I walked 3 miles, did an online workout, and cooked relentlessly. End of Week 2: I gave up, ordered in burgers (twice) and couldn’t look at my kitchen. This is week three: I’m taking it day by day, batch cooking (so that I don’t have to cook every day), slowing down, and mostly trying to be kind to myself and my partner.
Back to the galette! I’m V excited to share this recipe with you because it’s the first recipe that I developed that incorporates techniques that I learned in culinary school. I’ve tested her multiple times, sent her off to my dear friend Dave (who I fondly call My Big Strong Wife) and his fabulous cat Gabin, and now she is ready for you. This is a solid medium-level weekend project. Medium-level means you have a chunk of time and you’re willing to challenge yourself a little bit. When writing out this recipe, I tried to break it into four clear and distinct phases. I encourage you to focus on executing each of them beautifully because you absolutely can do this: make a flaky bomb-ass-dough, cook sweet jammy caramelized onions, pan fry golden potatoes, and finally bake the thing. I hope you make this galette and enjoy sharing her. If you live alone, go ahead and give some to a friend or a neighbor (sans contact of course) because food is enjoyed best when shared.
I hope you all are staying safe and healthy. Sending you all my love, dahlings.
Recipe Type: Weekend Project
Time: 2-3 hours
Servings: 4
Ingredients
Galette Dough (Pâte Brisée)
35 grams whole wheat flour (¼ cup)
95 grams white all purpose flour (¾ cup)
95 grams butter (7 tablespoons)*
25 grams (around 1.5 tablespoons) of whole milk
1 egg yolk
A generous pinch of salt
Filling
3 medium onions
Optional grated cheese (Swiss, Emmental, Gruyere, Comté, etc.)
21 grams of butter (1 tablespoon)*
2 cloves garlic
3 small or 2 medium potatoes
3-4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 egg yolk
Salt/pepper
Neutral cooking oil such as grapeseed or sunflower oil
Lemon for zesting
Crème fraîche or sour cream for serving
*This recipe uses a total of 8 tablespoons or 1 stick of butter
Equipment
Large nonstick skillet with a lid or a baking sheet to cover for potatoes
Baking sheet
Parchment paper
Bench scraper (or butter knife)
Plastic film wrap
Oven
Fridge
Instructions
Part 1 Galette Dough (Pâte Brisée) 10 minutes plus 1 hour to chill
Why you should weigh ingredients
Measure ingredients for the galette dough:
Pick an album that you want to listen to. Blast it.
Mix whole wheat, all purpose flour (AP), and salt together into a medium bowl. If you don’t have whole wheat flour, it’s completely fine to substitute with 100% AP flour.
Measure milk into a small container and set aside.
Measure butter, cut into one inch cubes, and set aside.
Crack an egg, separate the yolk, and set aside. Keep the 2 egg whites for an egg white scramble or store in the fridge to make cocktails with them later.
Chop the butter into small pieces into the flour with a bench scraper or knife:
Pour the dry ingredients into a pile or mound onto a clean surface.
Add the cubed butter into the middle of the flour mound.
With your bench scraper or butter knife, cut the butter into small pieces while keeping it in the mound of flour(the sizes will vary, but you’re going for irregular pea sized).
Then reshape the flour into a mound using your bench scraper.
Combine the flour and butter with your hands. By grabbing a palmful of the flour/butter mixture with both palms and rubbing your hands vigorously together to combine the butter into the dry flour. Grab another handful of flour and repeat until you have a shaggy dough with butter incorporated throughout.
Chopping butter into flour
Combine flour with your hands
Incorporate wet ingredients:
Gather the shaggy dough into another mound.
Make a little well in the center of the dough (kind of like when you make fresh pasta) big enough to hold the egg yolk and the milk.
Add the milk and egg yolk into the well and with a fork, whisk the egg yolk and milk in the crater. Slowly add flour to liquid with your fork from the outside of the well a little bit at a time into the well until the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated. Then bring the dough together with your hands. Use your bench scraper to help you by scraping the dough together.
Gently knead the dough until it comes together. The dough should have flecks of butter and not completely smooth. Take care to just combine the dough so that you don’t overwork it. If you overwork the dough it will develop gluten and lose tenderness.
Flatten the dough into a round 4-5 inch disk and wrap the dough in plastic film/cling wrap. Rest the dough in the fridge while you prepare the onions and potatoes.
Incorporating wet ingredients with a well
Dough wrapped in plastic film ready to chill
Part 2: Caramelized Onions 30-45 minutes
Peel three onions. Cut them in half (lengthwise making sure to cut vertically from the root of the onion to the tip), and then cut into 1/2 inch half moon slices.
Place a large skillet over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of neutral cooking oil. When the butter has melted and begins to bubble and sizzle in the pan, add the onions to the pan.
Give the onions a quick stir, then leave them alone for 3-4 minutes until they start turning to brown. Stir the onions after 3-4 minutes and continue cooking. They will begin browning. If they start browning too quickly or burning, turn down the heat and/or add oil.
While the onions are cooking, peel and mince garlic, and prepare the potatoes to pan fry later (see below).
When the onions turn a deep honey brown, add the garlic and two sprigs of thyme. Cook until the garlic softens. If you notice lots of brown bits stuck to the pan, then add a couple tablespoons of water to deglaze the pan. Stir to remove all the delicious fond—brown bits—from the pot.
When the garlic has cooked, is fragrant, and has turned translucent (a couple of minutes), season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and scoop them into a bowl and set aside.
Part 3: Pan-fry Potatoes 15 minutes
Preheat your oven to 400 ℉ (200 ℃)
Wipe out/wash the nonstick skillet and place on medium high heat. Add two to three tablespoons of neutral cooking oil. Once hot, give the oil a swirl to coat the bottom of the pan, and carefully place potatoes in a single layer on the pan.
Sprinkle two to three tablespoons of water on top of the potatoes, sprinkle salt on them, and cover. The water will create steam and cook the top of the potatoes while the oil will brown the bottoms. Let these cook for 3-4 minutes or so, peeking at the bottoms of the potatoes every once in a while.
Flip the potatoes over to brown on the other side when they’re golden and replace the lid. Note that the potatoes will cook at different rates depending on the different hot spots on the pan.
Once the potatoes are browned and cooked through (you’ll know because they will be soft and easy to pierce with the tip of a small knife), remove them from the pan and place onto a plate lined with a paper towel. Taste them and add salt as needed and season with pepper.
Assemble Galette
Folding galette dough
Folded galette before brushing crust with egg yolk
Remove the dough from the fridge.
Sprinkle flour evenly on a clean surface, and place the unwrapped dough on the flour.
Sprinkle the top of the dough with flour and with your rolling pin, give your dough a 3-4 good whacks. Then rotate the dough 90 degrees and give it 3-4 more whacks. This will start to soften the dough while helping it maintain the round shape.
Begin rolling your dough into a circle that is 12 inches in diameter and is around ¼ and inch thick.
Place your dough onto a parchment sheet lined baking sheet. If you need help visualizing, then watch this video.
Place the filling in the galette leaving a two inch border. Start with the cheese (if using), then top with onion, and add potatoes on the top.
Fold the galette dough crust over the filling by folding four-ish inch sections of the edge of the crust overlapping them slightly.
Brush the crust with a beaten egg yolk and drizzle a little bit of olive oil or add pats of butter to the top of the potatoes.
Place the galette in the oven and bake for 25-40 minutes (how long it takes to bake will depend on your oven). Rotate the galette once in the middle of cooking.
The galette is ready when the crust turns deep brown, and the bottom of the galette is golden. Check the bottom of the galette by carefully lifting the galette with a large spatula and peeking. Take care not to break the galette.
When ready, remove the galette and let cool for a few minutes before sprinkling the galette with thyme leaves picked from the remaining two sprigs of thyme.
Serve with a dollop of sour cream or crème fraiche and zest a lemon over the top. Serve with a green salad with a simple vinaigrette (one part lemon juice, one part oil, salt/pepper — a teaspoon of Dijon mustard optional)
