Grand Central Bakery | Cranberry Pear Galette

Cranberry Pear Galette

Everybody has their favorite go to procrastination activity...cleaning, paying bills, matching socks... Me? I bake. I had deleted about 20 opening sentences to this blog before I started to think about dessert, the bowl of ripe pears attracting fruit flies on my counter and the big bag of fresh cranberries in my fridge. Did you know it is cranberry harvest season and that Oregon is the county's fourth largest cranberry producer? Scott Mackenzie grows cranberries on the south coast of Oregon near Port Orford. A couple weeks ago he brought me a sample of his Food Alliance certified Clearwater Cranberries. They are really pretty....

Clearwater Cranberries

Before I could struggle with another sentence I had decided to bake the Cranberry Pear Tart from The Grand Central Baking Book for dessert (pg. 124). A rustic tart or galette is a delicious quick dessert to have in your baking arsenal and a great way to use whatever fruits are in season. Lucky for me I had a collection of leftover pie dough scraps in my fridge. (All home bakers should be encouraged to stack leftover pieces of dough and re-chill them for later use).

Many rustic tarts require minimal prep - just sugar the fruit and pile it into a crust. While it is not like me to add an extra step to anything - this filling is one that really benefits from being cooked ahead of time. It does cook really quickly and adding corn starch insures your tart is not a soupy mess. The one down side is you do need to let the filling cool a bit before using it.

Cooking the fruit

Rolling out the pie dough scraps, ("scrappy scrap" as we affectionately call it at the bakery) can take some muscle, but if the dough refuses to get bigger while rolling just let it rest in the fridge for 5 to10 minutes and it will roll out like dream. The beauty of a rustic tart is they do not have to be perfect to be delicious and asymmetry is OK.

Rolling out pie dough scraps

By the time this Cranberry Pear Tart is baked the cranberries look like shiny jewels just waiting for a healthy dollop of whipped cream and my blog will be written!