Mama’s Apple Galette

This a great desert recipe for the holidays especially with such wonderful organic apples in season at the Farmer’s Market. My mom Carol Afshar made this at the Holiday event I had at my house a few weeks ago. The recipe was adapted from Claire Ptak who was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse and has a charming bakery now in London called Violet.

This recipe makes dough for 2 tarts.
Ingredients
2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 Tsp salt (omit if using salted butter)
12 Tbs butter (1 1/2 sticks and cold)
1/3 to 1/2 cup cold ice water
4 or 5 medium apples
sugar (I use maple, date or organic brown)
1 egg
Whipped Cream

Cut the butter in a bowl with the flour and salt. Work half butter that’s cut into cubes in with fingers until the mixture feels like oatmeal or cornmeal. Add rest of butter. Dribble the water into the dough while tossing the mixture until the dough begins to clump. Divide the dough into two parts, and make into balls. Wrap each ball in parchment (i don’t like to use plastic) flatten into disks. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for an hour or so. Freeze second disk if not using.
When ready to make the tart, let the dough warm up to room temp. and preheat over to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface about 12 inches in diameter. Transfer the pastry to baking sheet lined with parchment papetr and refrigerate while cutting up apples.
Peel, core and slice apples and toss with one or two Tbs of sugar. Arrange apples on the pastry, in overlapping concentric circles but leave a border around the whole circumference. Fold the dough up and over the apples, and brush the rim of dough lightly with beaten egg. Sprinkle with a bit of sugar and cinnamon. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Serve with cream.