Baking Up a Peach Bounty: Peach Galette with Brown Sugar Crust

My husband and I absolutely love summer corn, and at the very tail end of corn season, my husband texted me from the golf course to ask me to pick up some corn that he had reserved at the produce stand (who knew that you can call ahead to reserve produce?). I went there intending to just buy the corn, but they were having a special on tree fruit -- I could fill a sizeable plastic basket of any peaches, nectarines, and apples I wanted for only $15. The peaches looked amazing and I can't resist a deal, so I bought a basket of peaches. Then I got home and needed to figure out what to do with them.

I decided to try a recipe from BBC Good Food for a "Peach Galette with Brown Sugar Crust." You make the pastry in the food processor, by processing cold butter with flour, butter, and brown sugar; and pulsing in an egg yolk and cold water. The crust recipe doesn't include salt, but I added some. After chilling the dough briefly, I rolled it out into a large circle. Then I spread almond frangipane on top (a mixture of softened butter, brown sugar, egg, and almond flour) and the arranged sliced peaches that I had tossed with lemon juice, powdered sugar, cornstarch, and vanilla. I also added some salt to the fruit. I folded up the edges of the pastry over the peaches, brushed it with egg wash, and sprinkled on coarse sugar before baking.

The recipe says that you should bake the galette on a baking sheet that has been pre-heated in the oven. But I have a large FibraMent baking stone that I keep in the oven at all times, although it lives on one of the lower racks that I don't normally use. So I just put the galette on a baking sheet that I put directly on top of the preheated stone, and I figured I should get roughly the same result. After the galette is cool, you're supposed to brush the fruit with warmed peach jam. I didn't have any peach jam or even apricot, but I didn't want my peaches to look sad and dry -- so I brushed them with a little simple syrup.

My basket of peaches provided enough fruit to make two galettes and then some; I happily ate the remaining fruit out of hand. The firm crust was nicely baked on the bottom and the fruit was perfectly tender without being mushy. This was the perfect recipe to take advantage of my peach bounty -- the sweet fruit was the star. 

 

This recipe calls for zero salt whatsoever, although it does use salted butter in the frangipane. While I added salt to both the crust and fruit, I forgot to add salt to the frangipane, and I also made it with unsalted butter, so it was salt-free. Some salt definitely would have helped, as would some almond extract. I was disappointed in the weak almond flavor of the frangipane. Still, I quite delighted with this galette, which was perfectly peachy.

Recipe: "Peach Galette with Brown Sugar Crust" from BBC Good Food.