Not that we needed an excuse to bake a delicious pie, but Pi Day seemed like a good one! This is our Rustic French Galette featuring sweet potatoes, topped with feta cheese and drizzled with honey. This pie is perfectly balanced on both sweet and savory aspects. This can be served as a main dish with a side salad, or eating cold straight out of the fridge! We won’t tell anyone. 😉
What the Heck is a Rustic French Galette?
A galette is a traditional French flat, and round cake/pie made of pastry dough or bread. They can be made ranging from a puff pastry (see Galette des Rois), or like this one with a rustic buttery flakey crust. What makes a galette beautiful is the range of creativity you can have with them, making them your own and filling them with whatever you like.
Galettes are typically made to be sweet and served for dessert, but they can definitely be made as savory styles and eaten as a main course. Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed an uprising of savory galettes in vegetarian and vegan communities online.
How to Make a Galette
There are only a few easy steps to making a galette: making your pie-dough, rolling it out, and filling it with your favorite cheese, plant-based meats, veggies, and herbs. Next, you fold in the edges, bake, and serve warm.
This dish is totally customizable, and you can definitely make it your own in anyway you like! If you have a favorite family pie-dough recipe, use that, or follow the one provided. You honestly can’t go wrong either way.
Making the Dough
Once the dough is made, the toppings can be customized to your liking. I highly suggest following the dough recipe, and tips found below.
When making pastry dough, it is very important to add cold butter and iced water to the flour mixture. The use of cold ingredients is absolutely essential because it will help to keep the fat from the butter from melting. If the fat melts, it will be absorbed into the flour and the pie crust or pastry will not end up as flaky as we had hoped. The cold water works almost like a barrier, and helps form a beautiful, light and flaky end product.
In addition to cold water, it is equally important that when we are mixing the dough together, we want to avoid overworking it. Mix the dough until it is just combined to prevent causing too much gluten development.
Assembly
As previously mentioned, anything can be put into this pie. We used sweet potato because they are currently in season, and the rosemary because it just pairs perfectly with it. If you have any vegetables wasting away in your fridge, I highly suggest replacing the sweet potato in this recipe with whatever you have on hand!
Other really nice topping combinations are: mushroom and spinach, zucchini and peppers with goat cheese, or even heirloom tomatoes and basil. The possibilities are endless, and we hope that you express your creativity when making this pie!
Rustic French Galette with Sweet Potato, Feta and Honey
Ingredients
Galette Filling
- 2 sweet potatoes sliced ⅛ inch thick using a mandoline or very sharp knife
- 1 sprig fresh rosemary
- 2 tablespoons organic honey for topping
- ¼ cup feta cheese crumbled, for topping
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Buttery Galette Dough
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 ½ cups all- purpose flour plus more for dusting work surface
- ¾ cup very cold butter diced into ½ inch cubes
- 4 to 8 tablespoons ice water
Instructions
- 1. Whisk the salt, and flour in a medium bowl. Cut the butter pieces into small cubes, and add them to the bowl. This mixture can be pulsed in a food processor to create a mealy texture, or it can be done by hand with a fork. Once the butter is incorporated into the mixture, the dough should look crumbly.
- 2. Begin adding the ice water one tablespoon at a time, mixing with a rubber spatula, until the dough forms into larger clusters and holds together. That should be around 4 tablespoons of water, but may require a little more.
- 3. Onto a floured work surface, remove the dough from the bowl, and work the dough just enough to form a ball.
- 4. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- 5. Very carefully slice the sweet potatoes using a mandoline slicer for even thickness. Place the sweet potatoes in a medium bowl, and season with salt, pepper, chopped fresh rosemary, and olive oil. Set aside.
- 6. Begin rolling out the dough using a floured rolling pin, until it is around ¼ inch thick and rectangular in shape. Place the rolled out dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
- 7. Layer the seasoned sweet potatoes onto the dough, starting in the center and working your way out leaving about 1 inch of crust around the edges. Top the layered sweet potatoes with feta cheese, and begin folding the edges of the dough inwards, folding over the filling. It will look rustic!
- 8. Brush the edges of the crust with olive oil, and bake in the preheated oven for about 35-40 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through the baking process. Bake until the filling is tender, and the crust is a deep golden colour.
- 9. Drizzle the galette with honey while still warm. Cut the galette into 8 slices, and serve. Be careful when transferring and cutting into this galette as the crust is very flakey.