Peach Galette is peach of a pie

Yippee, it’s peach sea­son and time for that quin­tes­sen­tial dessert: peach pie.

I’ve been bak­ing up a storm in this genre – okay, I’ve made two pies in the past week – with great results. As with many cook­ing coups, the first excel­lent pie I made was the result of a happy acci­dent. I ran out of flour while mak­ing Julia Child’s amaz­ingly fool­proof and delec­table food proces­sor dough and had to impro­vise. This meant pat­ting the too-moist dough that was impos­si­ble to roll into a 12-inch pizza pan, then fold­ing the edges over my peach mix­ture to make what is called a free-form pie or galette. The result was sen­sa­tional. It was quickly devoured by assem­bled fam­ily and friends accom­pa­nied by PC vanilla Choco­late Fudge Crackle ice cream and driz­zled with my home-made red cur­rant sauce, all to rave reviews. Here’s the recipe.

Peach Galette Recipe

Dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp gran­u­lated sugar
³⁄₄ cup diced cold but­ter
¹⁄₄ cup cold veg­etable short­en­ing or lard
6 to 8 tbsp iced water

Peach fill­ing:
About 6 cups sliced peaches
½ cup light brown or organic cane sugar
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tbsp lemon juice

Glaze and gar­nish:
1 egg, beaten with a lit­tle milk
About ½ cup sliced almonds

For dough, com­bine flour and sugar in food proces­sor. Add but­ter; pulse 5 to 6 times to break up but­ter roughly. Add veg­etable short­en­ing; pulse a few times or until mix­ture resem­bles coarse crumbs. Grad­u­ally add water through feeder tube until mix­ture begins to clump. Form dough into ball; wrap in plas­tic wrap and chill about 1 hour.

Pre­heat oven to 350F.

For fill­ing, com­bine all ingre­di­ents in large bowl.

Roll out dough on floured sur­face to about 13 inches in diam­e­ter. Place on 12-inch round pizza or other bak­ing pan. Mound peach mix­ture in mid­dle of dough leav­ing about 2 inches of dough around it. Fold edges of dough, pleat­ing if nec­es­sary, on top of peaches. Brush edges of dough with egg mix­ture. Sprin­kle almonds on top of peach mixture.

Bake in oven about 45 to 50 min­utes or until pie is golden brown. Serve with ice cream and driz­zle with red cur­rant or rasp­berry sauce.

Makes about 8 servings.