pies « (y)our food choices™

Galettes are one of the easiest things to bake at home. It’s basically a rustic free-form pie. No edges to crimp. No exact measurements of the size and shape of the rolled out crust. And, no worries that the crust will fail and the juices from the pie will overflow. They’re supposed to bubble over a bit.

This recipe is easy to whip up any day of the week, and it’s delicious. We’ve used this recipe since the cookbook and PBS show, Baking with Julia, was first published. We’ve adapted the pastry recipe, omiting the original corn meal (we didn’t have any in the pantry!) and replacing it with oat flour. Oat flour always reminds us of steel cut oats and breakfast and we love it’s nutty flavor.

You can use just about any fruit in liu of blueberries. Exact measurments are unecessary for this style of baking. So have fun with it and include your currious budding epicures. These are hands-on treats!

Blueberry Galette
adapted from Baking with Julia

Pastry
3 tablespoons kefir or yogurt
1/3 cup ice cold water
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup oat flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
7 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 14 pieces

11 ounces blueberries, rinsed, dried, and stems removed
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoon turbinado sugar
2 tablespoon honey

Mix the kefir and water together, set aside.

In a food processor add the flours, sugar, and salt. Pulse a few times. Take off the lid and add all the butter. Pulse a few more time. You’ll want the consistency of very course sand. You may need to break the butter up with your hands a little. Through the feed tube, with the machine running add most of the liquid. Turn the machine off. Remove the lid and check to see if the dough comes together. If more liquid is needed, pour the contents out in a large bow and finish mixing by hand.

Divide the dough into two pieces. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap. Squish until it becomes a round disc. Set in the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Once the discs are chilled, Carefully unwrap the disc onto the plastic wrap and place another piece of plastic wrap on top of the dough. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough, moving the disc a quarter turn each roll, and flip the dough over and continue to roll. Roll the dough out to about 10 inch diameter, about 1/8 inch thick. Place the rolled dough onto a cookie sheet and place in the freezer for 5 minutes.

Remove the disc from the freezer and remove one of the pieces of plastic. Place the disc on a parchment lined baking sheet with edges. Remove the other piece of plastic. Do the same with the second disc, on the same baking sheet or another one. Place half the blueberries in the center of each disc. Pinch off pieces of butter and put on top of the blueberries. Add a drizzle of honey and sprinkle 1/2 the sugar over the berries. Fold over the edges and press the sides in a little to form to keep its shape. Sprinkle the rest of the sugar around the edge of the pastry.

Place the tray in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove the pan from the oven. Allow to cool before serving.

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Here are 18+ Reasons to have your cake and eat it too!

When we awoke Saturday morning Jason still had chocolate frosting to make, and a cake to frost before we headed out the door to this year’s Food Blogger Bake Sale. The Cook’s Illustrated chocolate frosting recipe that accompanies their old-fashioned chocolate cake recipe is amazing and will undoubtedly become part of our culinary repertoire. With no powdered sugar and lots of butter and chocolate, this frosting is similar to a ganache but with a nice caramel touch. We couldn’t stop licking the spoons and bowls this morning, which added a much-needed boost to get us out the door. Our breakfast consisted of frosting and coffee, a perfect start to a bake sale morning.

The sale was hosted by 18 Reasons in the Mission near Bi-Rite and Tartine Bakery. The tables inside this tiny space were already overflowing with wonderful looking cookies, cupcakes, pies, breads, and more when we arrived with our 2 cakes, 6 jars of granola, and 4 loaves of bread. The space was small and cozy and we kept bumping into each other trying to find room for all the goodies.

It's just like riding a bike. The first cake Jason has frosted in years.

The bake sale pulled in $2,400 in support of Share Our Strength’s mission to end childhood hunger in the USA. Yes, it’s a bit ironic to hold a Bake Sale to end hunger. But if we’re going to eat our cake anyway, why not do so in support of those who have nothing. As San Franciscans we know how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful city with all it’s culinary privileges. But the city hasn’t always been so lucky and a hundred years ago, San Francisco was just starting to rebuild after the devastating earthquake of 1906. What a great capstone on a beautiful, if a bit wet, weekend to run Bay to Breakers in celebration of San Francisco’s enduring resilience, as well as to eat a piece of cake or two.

And what better way to burn off all the calories from Saturday’s Bake Sale than to run across the city at 7:00 am? Well, we can think of a lot of better ways, but when the whole city is going to a party so early on a Sunday morning, in this case the 100^th running of B2B, we had to join in on the fun with the other 60,000+ revelers. We’re not the costume wearing sort or the nude runner kinds of guys. We wore our typical, boring running shorts, t-shirts, and shoes. But, run we must and run we did.

Of course, it would have been a much better run had we not drunk two bottles of wine the night before and ate dinner so late in the evening that we felt we were on Buenos Aires time. But even with the wine and late night dining our times were respectable. Jason ran the course in 1:00 and 15 seconds (not the under 1 hour he was hoping for) and Steve ran it in 1:06 and 57 seconds. Had we taken the run seriously we could have both finished in under an hour. Something to think about before we run the San Francisco Half Marathon later this summer at – gasp – 5:45 a.m. We must remember: no booze the night before, no midnight dining, and early to bed. Of course, a slice of cake or a croissant will be mandatory before and after the run. The wheels are already turning for the menu planning.