asparagus, potato and sweet onion galette

A galette is just a pie with authority issues; unruly and endlessly adaptable, it’s the rapscallion of the baking world. I even flatter myself to think we have a peculiar sort of kinship—if I were to reincarnate in edible form, I like to think I’d retain my rough edges and eschew the conventionality of a pie dish.

Notwithstanding our soulmate status, I have one small galette grievance: because there’s a lot of crust around the edges—there to make up for the structure of said dish—the filling to crust ratio drops sharply around the last third of a slice, which often leaves wanting more of the former and less of the latter. To mitigate this, I ignore the usual advice to leave the borders bare before folding, spreading caramelized onion and parmesan end-to-end. But of course, it’s also crucial to get the crust itself right, and somewhere along the way to finding one I’d enjoy through the tail end of a slice, I upended the way I’ve been making pie dough for more than a decade—and I’m never going back. 

a digression on the virtues of yogurt in pie crust

Since my very first apple pie (or since my first successful one—the very first one emerged a pie-shaped lump of coal), I’ve been making pie/galette dough in more or less the same way, with minor adjustments. If you’re not familiar with the 3-2-1 method, allow me to blow your mind: pie dough is a standard ratio (by weight) of flour-fat-water. A moment for those of us who stopped paying attention in math class earlier than advisable:

3 : 2 : 1

flour : fat : water

12oz. flour (~2.5 cups): 8oz. fat (2 sticks of butter): 2-4oz. ice water*

*(for a double-crust pie or two 9-inch galettes)

You add a bit of salt to the flour (about a half teaspoon kosher salt per cup), rub fat (butter, lard, or shortening—I prefer butter) into the flour until it resembles chunky wet sand, add enough ice water to bind it into a shaggy mass, chill, and roll. Some cooks use a food processor to cut the butter in, but I get better results with my hands—plus it’s fun, and there’s one less thing to wash.

There’s nothing wrong with this method: it’s worked for me and countless other cooks for time immemorial. But let’s talk about the water. The quantity of water is a range because, not withstanding the typical how-humid-is-your-kitchen variable, you have to adjust for how much moisture is in your butter/lard/whatever—and the amount of moisture, even in commercial butter, can vary widely enough to throw off your results. This makes the method a wee bit unforgiving—add too much ice water and you get a tough, shrunken crust; not enough and it won’t come together. If you add too much water, you can fix it by adding more flour, but add too much of that and you throw off the flour to fat ratio.

AND while you’re trying to figure out if it’s too wet, too dry, or Goldilocks just right, the clock is a’tickin’—work too slowly and the butter will melt, eliminating the flaky pockets we value pie crust for. You see where I’m going with this: too many rules and not enough room for error for my taste. Maybe it’s the freewheeling spirit of the galette that had me up late questioning tradition, but here’s where I landed: whole (full-fat) yogurt works better than water.

I’m not reinventing the wheel here—yogurt-only dough recipes exist, but from what I can tell, they’re far from the norm. Most recipes incorporating yogurt also use ice water, but why bother? (This may be the one point on which I disagree with the incomparable Deb Perelman, whose excellent recipe inspired this one). When water and flour come together, gluten proteins form—desirable in bread, but a big no-no for shortcrust pastry. Obviously, there’s water in yogurt, but the fat helps keep water away from the protein molecules, keeping things reliably tender. It’s the same reason some cooks add vodka, but yogurt has a touch more richness and a delicious tang—vodka will inhibit gluten formation, but it won’t enhance the dough’s flavour.

I like tricks that require no extra effort, but I have a special place in my heart for methods that make food better and are actually easier than the traditional way. My good people: subbing yogurt for water not only improves the crust, but makes it significantly more pliable and easier to roll out, skirting one of the major reasons a tired cook will forego the homemade stuff and buy puff pastry.

Note to future self: try sour cream, skyr, greek yogurt, and kefir. Tally results. I promise to report back, but in the meantime, try a crust with exclusively whole, plain yogurt as the liquid part of your ratio and thank me later.

and now: on this particular galette

It’s definitely spring—hence the asparagus—but full disclosure, it’s also way too early for local asparagus in my neck of the southern Ontario woods. I bought these spritely bunches from a grocery store, and they travelled here from Mexico—oh well. (By the way, these photos are from when I made two).

I mentioned earlier that I tend to find the crust-to-filling ratio too high at the end of a galette slice—even with a perfectly delectable crust. Now, most recipes will advise you to pile your fillings in the center and leave the border bare for folding. That makes good sense for wetter, fruity galettes that need to be well-contained, but this one holds its own with minimal structure (again, I feel seen). We’re going to make proper caramelized onions and spread them from one end to the other, and cover the lot with parmesan so you get extra flavour and texture when you fold the crust over. This is my grown-up ode to the stuffed crust pizza of childhood birthday parties.

There’s also thinly sliced potato for a bit of earthy heft, and a pile of asparagus that stays verdant and crunchy thanks to Deb Perelman’s advice to salt the vegetable before cooking. An extra step, but well worth it. It not only softens the asparagus, helping it retain its colour in the oven without turning brown but yields well-seasoned asparagus. (Don’t rinse it after draining).

(If for some reason you’ve been living under a rock and have yet to discover Deb’s Smitten Kitchen, allow me to be the thousandth person to recommend that you should).

I also offer a variation with jammy yolks, pictured below. They are entirely optional, but fun if you don’t mind having a few leftover egg whites in the fridge to cook for breakfast (or make meringues with). Plop them on top in the last few minutes of baking, and watch them carefully—you want to just heat them through and avoid them forming a skin (but if that happens, whatever – it still tastes great). Cut into the yolks before slicing the galette, and spread them roughly over the top. Eggs and asparagus are a famously good match, since the yolky richness tempers asparagus’s strident notes. But if you use the yolks, plan not to have leftovers—this doesn’t keep as nicely with them, and will last in the fridge for at least a week otherwise.