By Diann Leo-Omine

Yields one 8-inch galette, serves 3-4 as part of a meal

A galette for our shortest days. The crust is light and flaky with a dash of apple cider vinegar and a touch of pastry flour. A comforting filling is brightened by cheerful lemon zest and grounded by woody thyme. Grocery store rotisserie chicken (or even leftover Thanksgiving turkey) would be ideal here. You can also substitute the condensed soup with a thick gravy.

Written for San Francisco Cooking School’s Cooks Club, a community cookbook in progress

Pastry

83 grams all-purpose flour (about 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons)

28 grams pastry flour (about 1/4 cup) 

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

113 grams diced unsalted butter (1/2 cup, 1 stick)

40 grams ice water (about 3 tablespoons) 

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Chicken filling

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup diced onion

1/2 cup diced carrot

1/2 cup diced celery

2 cups diced cooked chicken

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/4 cup condensed creamy soup (cream of mushroom or chicken will work well here)

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

kosher salt

black pepper

Egg wash

1 egg

1 tablespoon milk

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Make pastry dough

In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine flours, salt, and butter. Give the butter a shake in the flour, then chill the bowl for 10 minutes in the freezer (or 20 minutes in the refrigerator).

Remove the mixing bowl from the freezer. Press butter cubes into flour with your fingertips, forming miniature ears. The goal here is to make the butter pliable but not to melt it.

Strain ice water into the mixing bowl. Add apple cider vinegar. Rake your hand through the mixture, gently combining the flour-butter mixture with the liquids. The dough will be shaggy at first. You should still see perceptible cubes of butter. The dough is ready when you can press the mixture together and it doesn’t crumble apart. You may need an extra tablespoon or so of water, but only add if you still see dry residual flour.

Lay plastic wrap into a smaller mixing bowl and dump dough on top. Using the corners of the plastic wrap, coax the dough into a round disk. Refrigerate for one hour, up to overnight.

Make filling

While the dough is chilling, heat a large nonstick saute pan with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions and saute for two minutes, until just softened. Next add the carrots and saute for two minutes more. Then add the celery and saute for one minute. 

Add the chicken and saute for two minutes. Turn off the heat. Crumble the thyme with your fingers and add to the saute pan with the condensed soup and lemon zest.

Taste and add more salt and pepper as needed. Transfer to a sheet tray and spread out the filling to cool. You can also chill the filling, ten minutes or up to overnight.

Form pastry

After one hour, remove the dough disk from the refrigerator. On a sheet of parchment paper, dust a light coating of flour and set the dough on top. Dust more flour on top of the dough, and begin to roll the edges, rotating the parchment every quarter turn to roll the edges evenly. Roll until the pastry is about 9-10 inches in diameter. It’s perfectly fine if the pastry is not a perfect round. Brush off any excess flour. Transfer parchment and pastry to a sheet tray.

Mound filling into the middle of the pastry, leaving about 1 and 1/2 inch border.

Fold one edge of the dough up and over the base of the mounded filling, pulling up the next edge to close off the previous one. Repeat with subsequent folds until you reach the initial fold. Don’t worry about the edges being fully sealed – you don’t want to crush the dough by pressing too hard. If the edges look a little scraggly, you can tuck them under.

Chill pastry for 20 minutes, or up to overnight.

Bake pastry

While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In the meantime, make the egg wash. Whisk the egg, milk, and salt together in a small bowl.

Remove pastry from the refrigerator and brush the edges of the dough with the egg wash. Be sure to brush the interior parts of the border as well.

Place pastry into the hot oven, until the edges just start to turn brown, about 20 minutes. Rotate the tray.

Remove pastry from the oven when the bottom is browned and the top is golden brown. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Serve warm.