Summer Fruit Galettes (or “crostadas”…)

Like seriously we argue over this.

Galette! NO! Crostada! NOPE - GALETTE! Say it with me: cro-STAH-dah. Free form pie?

Let’s just call the whole thing Yummy Summer Fruit (or veggie, really) Goodness! I mean it’s such a simple thing. A great EASY way to celebrate the bounty of the spring and summer and fall harvests. Who doesn’t love baked fruit, concentrated in amazing flavor and sweetness wrapped in a thin, crumbly, sugar crusted pie dough?

And if you’re not the type to like rolling out a dough to the perfect circle to cover every perfect inch of a pie plate, this is PERFECT! Roll it however it goes and then just wrap and pinch around your fruit. That. Easy. Just look at how rustically impressive this galette (yeah, I’m on Team Galette) turns out!

(I took photos like they were twins. I couldn’t help it. They’re both so lovely!!!)

I made these beauties in all of 15 minutes and it shouldn’t have even taken that long. But I couldn’t decide what fruits to put where so I hemmed and hawed. And then decided to make two.

I had casually, and without much forethought, invited my family over for Memorial Day to enjoy a reflective day together. Of course, I had to do most of the catering and all of the sweets portion thereof. And I didn’t want to get too involved because I only arranged this shindig 2 days before.

And truth be told, I didn’t want to make anything at all. Hey, sometimes even the foodiest of foodies just don’t feel like it. And I didn’t. I had fruit on my counter at its peak of ripeness and without using it probably in the next 12 hours it would start to turn to the point that my kids (and husband) would complain about it being mushy or not perfect looking.

So into a galette, it went. I already had a couple pre-made pie doughs. Ok. They weren’t just pre-made. They were purchased. In rolls. From the refrigerated section at my grocery store. (I TOLD you I didn’t feel like making efforts…) So I grant you the guilt-free ability to make the “I’m just gonna buy one” decision for yourself as well 🙂

Now there’s only one thing you need to guard against with a Galette (or crostata): over filling it. This is soooooo easy to do, and I did cut too much fruit for mine. So I snacked on it while they were baking away on my pizza stone in the oven. For my Strawberry Galette, I used about 2 cups of sliced strawberries. You may want to use a bit more depending on how your crust looks rolled out. Go with the flow.

Now for THIS beauty, I went overboard. I used waaaaayyyyy too many of everything. I couldn’t contain myself with the apricots and cherries. SO I figured I had to balance with the nectarines… But then it was just too much of it all. SO I figured out that what ended up nicely fitting into the pie shell was 2 apricots, 1.5 nectarines (go ahead and eat the rest) and a couple handfuls of cherries.

Now it’s rare that you’ll ever catch ME saying a handful of this, or eyeball that when it comes to baking. But that’s the ease and beauty of Galettes. You can make so much of it up as you go! How can you NOT LOVE this stuff??? (I may stop typing now and go make a straight cherry one…)

Take this recipe and run with your own imagination! If you are making your own pie dough, just make sure you only use a single crust amount. So if your recipe is a double crust size recipe, only use half. Or just go ahead and make two. �?�

Enjoy!