Crispy Mushroom Galette

I am finding the savory baking in Dessert Person has been given me the most satisfying results so far. While I love baking the cakes and cookies, I never thought about baking in a savory fashion before, which is really opening up my eyes to new opportunities. This made me excited to try the Crispy Mushroom Galette.

This recipe required what may be my least favorite dough, the Flaky Olive Oil Dough. This vegan dough tastes good, however it’s not easy to develop since it does not include any butter. Last time I made it for the Ricotta and Broccoli Rabe Pie, I had to make a double batch, so I did the same this time as well, knowing it is difficult to roll out. I will say my second time making this dough was much more successful; it did not break apart nearly as much as it did the first time, and therefore I didn’t add as much olive oil. I made the dough the night before making the Crispy Mushroom Galette to make life a little easier.

Before I started the recipe, I chopped up the leeks, mushrooms, garlic and rosemary. I had a third leek, so I used all of it. For mushrooms, all I could find was shiitake in the list that Claire suggested. I also made sure to smash four garlic cloves and grate one (My husband and I are debating what “smashed” means with garlic; I peeled it and literally smashed it so it was still relatively intact, he thought that was not right.).

One nice thing about this recipe is you’ll use the same pan for everything on the stove. I didn’t really have a great skillet option for the amount of veggies I was cooking, so I used my biggest sauce pan. The leeks took about 15 minutes to get to the soft, brown texture. I added a couple splashes of water throughout the process to help them with moisture. I then put those back in the bowl and mixed them with the Dijon mustard and salt and pepper. An important note about this recipe—there’s a lot of salt in it! You’re pretty much told to add salt and pepper to every component. Claire notes it’s good to heavily salt the mushrooms after cooking them, but if you’re conscious about this, maybe go lighter in other areas of the dish.

After the leeks, I cooked the mushrooms; due to concerns about us eating this for dinner at a decent time, I overlooked the section about browning the mushrooms in two halves. Luckily, my pan was big enough where they still cooked fine with the smashed garlic.

I let my dough sit out for a bit while I was cooking the leeks and mushrooms. I spread a little flour on the counter and rolled it out, but once again, this was easier said than done. There was no way it was going to successfully roll into a circle like the picture in the book! I really wish Claire did a YouTube video on a recipe with the Flaky Olive Oil Dough (maybe she has and I’ve yet to watch it), because I would love to see how she makes her dough look so effortless. There’s got to be something I’m missing in making this dough easier to work with. I decided to go with making this into a long rectangle; rather than a pizza shape, I went for calzone style!

When I had the dough rolled out as thinly as possible, I spread the leeks and mushrooms on top. Then I attempted to copy the direction about rolling up the sides, even though it basically made my galette look like a loaf. I covered it in more oil and sprinkled a little more salt and pepper on top. The galette baked for about 55 minutes. While it was baking, I sautéed the rest of the garlic with the panko crumbs and rosemary. I didn’t use any nutritional yeast, which I don’t think made a huge difference.

I was a little bummed to find it did not get very golden brown; the outside looked relatively dry. I sprinkled the bread crumb mixture on top and gave it a try. It certainly did not taste bad; the roasted leeks and mushrooms were very good. However, I would recommend making this recipe with the Flaky All-Butter Pie Dough. If you don’t care about eating a vegan recipe, this one could certainly use the butter to increase the crispiness and butter flavor. Although this one did not turn out how I intended, I think it could still have a lot of potential with a different, more flexible dough; that’s just part of learning how to bake all these different recipes!