Galette

This Campari-spiked galette features the herbal aperitif, tart cherries, and floral citrus zest and is perfect for those who prefer bitter to sweet.

We don’t bake with grapes as often as we should. But even the most average supermarket varieties come alive when roasted with a bit of sugar and seasoning.

Cannoli and sfogliatelle require complex technique—making them is best left to the professionals. But a galette-inspired variation? That’s a snap to do at home.

This peach, plum, and apricot galette recipe calls for easy phyllo pastry in lieu of pie crust.

This celebratory French tart is baked for the Feast of the Epiphany in the first month of the new year. Here it’s made easy for home bakers with frozen puff pastry.

This pie dough is wonderfully versatile, and cookbook author Ken Haedrich uses it for both sweet and savory pies. It has great flavor, flaky texture, and is easy to handle.

All kinds of seasonal fruit are great in galettes. Serve warm (with ice cream or whipped cream) or at room temperature.

This is a dessert you'll make over and over in the fall when interesting apples fill the farmers’ market; but the Calvados sauce ensures it even makes out-of-season apples sing.

This elegant little fall galette is studded with whiskey-soaked cranberries.

No pie plate or tart pan? Fold fresh peaches into a flaky pastry dough and bake on a sheet pan for an easy, no-fuss summer dessert.

A luxurious almond cream makes this one-hour summer stone fruit dessert taste like an all-day labor of love.

Use a wide spatula to peek underneath your galette to make sure the bottom is golden brown all the way across.

Fresh pineapple conjures up images of sunshine, so what better way to cheer up a winter day than with a galette made with golden yellow wedges layered over buttery pastry? Today's pineapples tend to be quite sweet, so just a hint of cinnamon and sugar is all you'll need to bring out their bright flavor.

Making this rustic, free-form pie couldn’t be more elementary. You still have to know how to prepare the dough and roll it out, but after that it’s quite forgiving. The foldover crust requires less fuss than does a pastry shell baked in a pan. Just arrange the sweetened fruit in the center of the dough, then fold the border up and over the filling and bake. Make sure to taste the fruit before you begin, adding more sugar if it tastes very tart.

There are a handful of dishes that serve as true measures of any good cook: a great omelet, a comforting and well-balanced soup, a perfectly crisp and golden roast chicken, and a tender, flaky pie crust. Perhaps because of the risk of overworking, and turning out something that tears in two or tastes more leaden than light, many home cooks shy away from homemade dough, opting instead for unfold-as-you-go boxed crusts. But making perfect pie dough from scratch should be part of any home cook’s basic skills. And the best dough for homemade pies is pâte brisée. Like pasta dough, pâte brisée is a simple paste containing flour and water, but in this case butter is a key component and plays an integral role in creating the flaky texture. Getting the right proportion of butter to flour is crucial, as is using very cold ingredients and a light hand.

Fran Gage is a wonderful pastry and bread maker as well as a cookbook author. She shares her special recipe for a marvelous fruit tart here. It is simple to make and quite delicious with its classic French apple and prune filling. Fran’s recipe for a sweet crust is wonderful and can be used for other fruit tarts.

This tart can be made with store-bought or homemade puff pastry. If using store-bought, you will need one 17 1/4-ounce package, which includes two sheets; divide the filling and the cherries in half, and bake two galettes instead of one.

This dessert works with a variety of fresh summer fruits; experiment with different combinations of stone fruits and berries, using the same proportions but adjusting the sugar accordingly.

Chopped fresh rosemary, grated parsnip, and cheese flavor the crust of these sensational little tarts. More cheese is sprinkled over the apple-and-onion filling. The tarts are perfect for an autumn picnic, harvest party, or other outdoor occasion.