Half Baked Harvest’s Savory Galette Recipe

Review by Kate Ross

What better time to try out a sumptuous recipe than during a pandemic? I decided to tackle Half Baked Harvest’s recipe to a savory heirloom tomato and zucchini galette, which was much easier to follow than I had anticipated.

Galette is a term used in French cuisine that refers to a flat pastry or bread, and in this case, it is a savory pastry with vegetables, cheese, and herbs. It’s sort of like the French take on pizza. It was my first time making a galette, as well as following a recipe from Half Baked Harvest, a blog that Teighan Gerard started back in 2012.

I typically skip the part of recipes where the author wastes my time talking about how the recipe reminds her of that summer at Grandma’s house, but this time I decided to read it. To my delight, she shared valuable insight about the recipe, which ultimately saved my dish from failure. She wrote that the first time she made the galette, she did not slice the tomatoes and zucchinis thin enough and it ruined the pastry. I made sure not to repeat her mistakes and I could taste the distinct flavors from the fresh heirloom tomatoes and zucchini.

Teighan tests her recipes out at least three times before publishing to her blog, and that perfection shows off. I have made savory pasties similar to a galette before and the crust always turns out soggy after the moisture is cooked out of the vegetables. However, Teighan solved the problem by writing instructions to place a thick layer of blue cheese and sharp cheddar on the bottom-most layer of the galette, acting as a barrier between the vegetables and the crust. Instead of becoming soggy, the crust was perfectly moist from the tomatoes and zucchini.

The cornbread crust was by far the most challenging part. My only criticism of the recipe is that she did not include an alternative to creating crust without a food processor, and I had to get creative. I did some research of my own and tested out a few different techniques, but the only thing that worked was manually combining butter with the cornbread and flour. I was disappointed to see that she did not provide alternate instructions because other pastry recipes typically include them. Galettes are fun to make, especially when following the right recipe. They are even more fun to eat because they taste just as good as they look.