Monday, July 28, 2008

Summer Fruit Galette

Hmmmmm......soooooooo.....apparently I'm not the greatest baker in the world. OK, I can accept that. Apparently there is indeed a village somewhere missing it's idiot. Ahem.....HERE I AM!!!! 5 hours later, I present to you, my very own proving ground, the Summer Fruit Galette. I would first like to welcome the new food processor to the family -- sorry you got the short end of the stick on that gig......as soon as I learn to use you properly, I promise we will communicate on a higher level. Say hello to my little friend.....

Until this challenge, I had never made pie dough. In fact, I am scared of pie dough. Turns out, it's with good reason. Since the pie dough needed to set up in the refrigerator for at least an hour, I made the pie dough the night before making the remainder of the galette. I apparently developed an inconvenient case of A.D.D. sometime between removing the pie dough from the refrigerator and rolling it out. I completely breezed over the section of the recipe that said to roll on a WELL-FLOURED surface. Oops. I also abandoned my dough for some time while I was in search of a measuring tape to ensure that I had rolled to the correct dimensions. Well, if you roll warm dough on an unfloured surface, it just turns into a big sticky mess. I finally was able to scrape the pie dough up and call a re-do.

I decided on my re-do round I would roll directly onto an overly well-floured baking stone. It was 13", as the recipe called for. I thought it would be easy to roll it out and then flip it to a larger baking stone. Yeah....guess how that went. I flipped the dough, and low and behold....there it remained on the smaller baking stone. It was like one of those bugs that hangs out on your ceiling for 12 straight days and you wonder if it's ever just going to fall off. It was almost like it was being held in place by some invisible force.....it was a battle between good and evil at that moment in my kitchen. Well, evil won that one. Well, here I am again, standing here with a warm lump of re-do dough. So, I decide to just roll it onto the bigger stone and not worry about it being perfect, and that way I wouldn't have to transfer it to anything. Finally, I had a roundish dough thingy on a surface I could bake it on. YAY. Now, on to the next task at hand.....


That's right - pie dough drove me to drink. It's all fun and games until Jules here has to roll out some pie dough. I'd like to thank my good friends at Crown Royal and also my buddies at PhillipMorris. Without them, something ugly may have just happened here. Don't worry, I'm under the skillful care of a certified professional.

Thoooo now I'm dwunk and I got a big knife and smashed apart some damn fwuit and put it in this thing and make my new best friend the pie dough reach up and hug it. I cook it and then custardededed it an cook it sum more. At thum point it ended up out of the stove and I ate it.


On a serious note, this is quite delicious and I will definitely make again. It's the kind of thing you hide in the laundry room because you know you're the only person that's actually going to go into the laundry room so the rest of the food thieves you live with will just have to starve. It's so good, in fact, that the dog is looking at me and licking his chops. Or, maybe he thinks I'm so drunk that I'm an easy target to take out.
My good friend Peggy of Pantry Revisited has now joined TWD thanks to my friend Amanda of Beckett Bakes It. Be sure to check them out. My thanks again to Amanda whose massive overpurchase of produce this week provided me with nectarines and plums.
Homework: Figure out my mental deficit when it comes to rolling out dough
Coming up next week: Black and White Banana Loaf....I think there's rum involved.

21 comments:

Amanda said...

This is the funniest thing I have ever read. I love your new profile pic!!! And, the pic of you with the Crown. Your gallette looks great! Can't wait to see you at work today :-)

Melissa said...

Very funny post! Sorry you had such a problem with the dough, but I'm glad the Crown Royal helped a bit. Your end result looks delicious!

Anonymous said...

Your post is hysterical ~ I love it! Your galette looks wonderful to me :)

melly~ said...

OMG I laughed so hard at the picture of you drowning your sorrows I scared my dog. Good times.

Don't be so hard on yourself. I think I'm a pretty good cook but wandering into unchartered territory I'm a novice. But I'm learning and that's uber cool.

A galette is a rustic looking dessert. I'm guessing rustic means ugly cause mine sits next to yours in that padgent. But the real question - how did it taste ? Mine was gone within hours. Must not have been too bad.

Keep cookin' baby. When that fails, pass the bottle ovah heah.

Unknown said...

Julie, you're too funny! The following phrase comes to mind after reading your post..."If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"...or drink away in frustration. You keep slappin'
out that dough, gurl...hehehe!!!

Peggy said...

Julie - I LOVE IT! Sounds like your experience was very similar to mine except I used wine to get me through it. Your galette looks delicious. :)

Anonymous said...

Great job for your first "pie" crust! :) It's beautiful!

Christine said...

Very funny post! Sorry that you had a problem with the dough your galette looks delicious!

Summertime said...

Well, whatever dough demons you wrestled with, it ended up very nicely!
ps My husband likes to dump the booze over his dessert. That's pretty good, too. ;)

Prudy said...

Very funny. Welcome! Beautiful galette. I have a friend with a PB and Julie blog, but I think it's on wordpress. Who knew there were two?

Tara said...

Hey..it turned out great! Love the pics..you're hilarious!

Sihan said...

drinking when you bake? now that's illegal girl! haha. your galette looks wonderful though. I would have stashed away mine as well if i didn't have a sore throat. Argh...

hoagiefest 2020 said...

Love your post! Keep up with the funny and I'll keep reading. If my first four weeks of TWD are any indication, you'll get plenty of chance to refine your pie-dough-making process. I've done it in two out of my four recipes thus far.

Pamela said...

Great post! It's nice to laugh out loud when trying to look at almost 200 galettes!

Teanna DiMicco said...

Hahaha hysterical post! The galette looks great! I hate rolling out pie dough as well :(

Eleganza Strings/ The DeLadurantey Family said...

Wasn't it yummy?!?

Amy said...

Ha ha ha!! Great post! But, good to know that pie dough is nothing that a little 'sauce can't get you through.

I thought the galette was delicious, too. I admit, I pretty much sat down with the galette on a serving platter and ate the whole thing (thank god I only made half a recipe).

Welcome to TWD!

Jennifer S said...

I, too, love your text, and, of course, the photo with the CR. It's good to have a sense of humor. It's even better with a little beverage!

Good work on the galette! You'll be a pie making fool now you've got the food processor... a great tool.

Flourchild said...

Your funny. I love the Say hello to my little friend line! My husband was just telling me son where that line came from..ha..made me laugh when I read that. Your galette is so pretty. By the way your little friend is wonderful looking! Keep up the baking your doing great!

Shandy said...

You poor thing! What a lot of work on the pie dough BUT talk about persistance. I am sooo impressed and the end result is very nice. I want to make this again just because I really loved it! =D

The Kitchen Vixen said...

dude this was some funny @#$%!

seriously i'm sitting here laughing to myself like a loon. i think people are staring;)

great galette!