Monday, June 17, 2013

Cheese and Tomato Galette - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 35th Installment.  The recipe is Cheese and Tomato Galette.

I love this recipe!  I made one of these last year when we did the berry variation, and have made it a couple of times since then.  The crust is easy (although you do need 2 hours lead time to chill it) and absolutely delicious.  It's almost a bit flaky - must be because of the way the butter gets cut in, or maybe it's the sour cream.  This is one of those recipes that is easy to prepare, but tastes and looks amazing, as if you worked for hours.   This time I used regular tomatoes, rather than plum tomatoes - they turned out well, although maybe the filling was a little moister than it would be with plum tomatoes.  My only problem is that people devour it so enthusiastically that there are never any leftovers :-)   

Ready to fold and pleat the edges
Ready to bake

Savarin - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 34th Installment.  The recipe is Savarin.

I made this for the deadline, but then life got the better of me, and I didn't get around to posting it (dance recital!  high school graduation! collapsing on the couch after dance recital and high school graduation! :-)   I think the delay in my posting also reflects a (gasp!) lack of enthusiasm for this recipe.  It was intriguing to make something truly French, with techniques that are new to me, but it seemed like an odd blend of yeast bread and cake.  It was very interesting to see the texture going from sticky, stretchy goo to puffy dough to very light cake/bread.   I didn't love the texture after soaking with sugar syrup.  I made a strawberry rhubarb mix for the fruit component, and whipped cream is always welcome.  Now that I have time, I'm going to go check out some of the other TWD bakers' blogs to see what everyone did with this.  Did I miss something about how wonderful it could be?  Did mine even turn out the way it was supposed to?
Sticky dough
Puffy and ready to bake

Baked and then soaked with sugar syrup