I once visited France. It was beautiful. In Canada one of our two official languages is French and I attended French immersion school wherein, starting in Kindergarten, you do all of your education in French. I love having a second language, but it does get rusty at an alarming rate when not in use, and when you go to a French speaking place it takes an hour or so for your brain to kick back into French mode. Being in France gave me an excellent opportunity to speak some French while immersed in the rich accents of Brittany and Paris. It also gave me the chance to experience French baking, an opportunity which I seized with great enthusiasm.
I am actually salivating thinking of the bread and pastries in France. Walking down the street on a Fall morning with a warm Pain au Chocolat, fresh from the pattiserie boulangerie is heaven on earth.
After all, I think that nearly everything could be improved by wrapping it in some kind of pastry or crust…couldn’t it?
A while ago I started making quiche in an oat crust. The dough is very similar to oatcakes, and it lends itself wonderfully to a variety of fillings. But I wanted to see if I could make more of a proper pie, and a healthy dough that would still be rollable. Enter my old friend spelt. Using part spelt and part oat flour the dough had enough elasticity to roll out giving it the ability to be free formed.
Lately I’ve been seeing loads of beautiful pictures of galette. These gorgeous pies are rustic and free formed and can be filled with sweet or savoury fillings. They’re stunning to look at, and just as lovely to eat.
The word galette actually describes quite a broad spectrum of things in France and French Canada with different regions having their own versions ranging from pastry to a potato dish and even, in the case of galette bretonnes, a filled buckwheat pancake. The best definition that I’ve found is from Oxford Dictionaries which says: “A flat round cake of pastry or bread. A savoury pancake made from potatoes or buckwheat.”
For mine I wanted to go with a free formed savoury pie, and for the filling I drew inspiration from my past when my Mum had a bagel store where my sisters and I worked. We had loads of different flavours of bagel, and a staggering array of cream cheese varieties. My favourite was the artichoke and sun-dried tomato cream cheese. It was delicious.
Artichokes are not something that I’ve cooked with before, but are lovely and flavoursome with an interesting texture. They’re loaded with nutrition being among the top antioxidant-rich foods, and are a great food to eat to naturally lower cholesterol.
Instead of cream cheese I used quark, a dairy product made from fermented soured milk (similar to fromage frais) which is generally very low in fat and high in protein. It gives the galette a slightly tangy flavour that complements the artichoke well. I also threw in some dried mixed mushrooms for a bit of added flavour and nutrition.
This dough worked really well in this recipe, but could be used for any number of pies. You could omit the herbs in the dough and maybe add a bit of date puree and come up with a lovely sweet dough to fill with fruit or custard (or both), or you could try out different savoury fillings. The crust is lovely for quiche as well, and if you’ve got left overs of the dough roll them out and bake them for some lovely and healthy crackers!
- 75g ground oats
- 125g whole spelt flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
- 1/2 tsp dried sage
- 3 Tbsp coconut oil
- 80mL water
- 250g quark
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg white, beaten (for brushing)
- 50g sun-dried tomatoes roughly chopped
- 20g mixed dried mushrooms, roughly chopped
- 390g tin of artichoke hearts (in water) rinsed, drained and halved lengthwise
- Pre heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
- Put the sun-dried tomatoes and dried mushrooms in a small bowl and pour over just enough hot water to cover them. Leave them to soak while you prepare the pastry.
- In a large bowl mix together the oats, spelt, salt, and herbs.
- Add the oil and water and mix until it comes together to form a rough dough.
- Turn it out onto a counter top and knead until the ingredients are well incorporated and the dough is smooth.
- Form the dough into a ball and then flatten it into a disk. Roll it out into a large circle, lifting and turning between rolls, to keep it from sticking to the counter, and to help it form an even circle. Set the dough in a pie plate allowing about 2 inches to hang over the edges the whole way around.
- Drain the tomatoes and mushrooms reserving 1 Tbsp of the soaking water.
- In a jug whisk together the quark, reserved soaking water and the 2 whole eggs until well combined and smooth.
- Arrange the artichoke hearts, mushrooms and tomatoes in the bottom of the galette, making sure that they’re fairly evenly distributed. Pour the egg and quark mixture over the top making sure to fill all of the gaps between the veggies.
- Carefully fold the dough up over the filling, folding it over itself to get it to form a snug circle. There should be a gap in the centre where the pie is open at the top.
- Either leave the galette in the pie plate, or carefully slide it out onto a baking tray. Brush the top of the pie crust with the beaten egg white before placing it into the oven.
- Leave to bake until the crust is golden brown, and the filling is set with a slight wobble.