Easy Apple Crisp Galette

This easy apple galette recipe is a show-stopper. It is an open-face pie with a crisp crumble topping covering the cinnamon-spiced tart apples and flaky, buttery pastry dough, wraps it all up in the perfect comforting parcel. It is the ideal dessert to serve after or before any meal!

Why I love this recipe

I love this recipe because, most days, I can’t decide if I want to make apple crisp or apple pie. I love apple desserts! One can never have too many apple recipes. So one day, I thought to myself, “self” how about we make both recipes smashed into one? Voila! The apple crisp galette was born. If you fear rolling out pie dough, have no fear; this recipe is not fussy. It’s supposed to be more of a rustic dessert. Galette may sound fancy but it’s not, it’s the French term for free-form pie or round rustic baked goods. I have tried to make this recipe with a few other fruits, but apple works the best. Blueberry was a disaster; it tasted great, but it ran all over and bubbled into a thin layer of blueberry fruit roll-up speckled with the crumble, not exactly what you want to serve your guests. It tasted good, but it wasn’t very pretty. I dished it out with some ice cream, and they gobbled it up. I might try peaches, but I’m sticking with the apple crisp galette for now.

Gather these ingredients

How to make the pastry

1. Add dry ingredients to a bowl with sugar and salt. Toss together.
2. Add water and add a couple of ice cubes to a measuring cup, let this sit and get nice and cold.
3. Now, cut cold butter into small cubes and add to the flour mixture, use a pastry cutter to cut butter into the flour. When the mixture is crumbly, similar to the size of peas, it’s time to add the ice water.
4. Remove the ice cubes and add white vinegar to the ice water (or lemon juice if you don’t have vinegar). Drizzle the 1/3 cup ice-cold water into flour and butter, a little at a time. Use a fork to pull the pastry together. After all the water has been added, and the dough starts to hold together, get a piece of plastic wrap and dump the pastry onto the sheet of plastic wrap. Using the edges of the plastic wrap, gather it up into a ball. The less you work the pastry, the better. Flatten the dough, for your galette crust, into a disk and place it in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes or up to 72 hours. 

Food processor: pastry can also be made in your food processor. Add flour, sugar, salt to the processor, add cubes of very cold butter. Pulse until butter is just incorporated. Drizzle in ice cold water and vinegar mixture. Pulse until the dough just comes together. DO NOT overwork the dough. Remove dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and bring ingredients together, by drawing plastic wrap edgers together. Flatten dough into a disk, and place it into the refrigerator for a minimum of 1 hour or up to 72 hours.

How to make the crisp

Add flour, sugar, salt and old fashioned oats to a medium sized bowl, mix together. Add cold butter cut into small cubes, cut ingredients together with a pastry cutter until ingredients are uniform in size. You can also do this step in your food processor, be careful not to over process you want it to be crumbly. Place crisp in the refrigerator while you cut apples and roll out the dough.

Note: If I’m using the food processor to make my crisp topping I will add sugar, flour, salt and butter pulse and then I add the oats at the very end and give it one or two quick pulses. Doing it this way helps to keep from breaking down the oats too much.

Assembling apple crisp galette

Peel and slice apples into thin slices. Place in a large bowl and toss with one tablespoon of lemon juice (orange juice also works if you don’t have lemon juice). Combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and salt together in a small bowl and sprinkle this mixture over the sliced apples. Mix to ensure apples are covered in the flour spice mixture. Set apple filling aside.

There are two ways you can roll out the pastry dough for this galette. Here is the first way – Remove pastry from the refrigerator. Tear a large piece of parchment paper off and place on the counter top, sprinkle with a light dusting of flour. Unwrap pastry dough from plastic wrap and place on parchment paper sprinkle dough with flour. Tear off another sheet of parchment the size of your baking sheet and place on top of dough. Roll dough out between the two pieces of parchment paper until it is an 18 inch round. Second way. Dust counter top generously with flour. Roll out dough into a 18 inch round, roll dough over your rolling pin and transfer to a parchment lined 12×15 rimmed baking sheet. Here is a tutorial for how to roll out pie crust / pastry dough.

1. Lay rolled out pastry onto a baking sheet parchment side down. Arrange apple slices in a circle in the center of the dough, creating an even layer of apples. Leave a 3-4 inch border of pastry around the edge. Now spoon crumble topping over top of the apples. Lightly press the crumble down into the top of the apple galette. Take the pastry and fold it in towards the center. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just needs to offer stability and hold in the apples and crumble topping. You want some of the filling peeking out in the middle through the top of the dough.
2. Beat one whole egg in a small bowl and add a tablespoon of water to thin it out. Take a pastry brush and brush the pastry dough with the egg wash, then sprinkle the top of the dough generously with the turbinado sugar (a coarse sugar sometimes called raw sugar) or if you don’t have it, granulated sugar works as well.
3. Place in a 350 degree preheated oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour until pastry is golden brown. Remove and let rest for 15 minutes. Slice into 8 pie shaped slices and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Tips and Tricks

• Egg wash: Brushing the pie crust with a beaten egg can be skipped, however the egg wash gives the turbinado sugar something to adhere to. It also gives the flaky crust a beautiful golden color.
• Apples: Baking apples are the best apples to use for this recipe. Tart apples such as braeburn, northern spy, jonagold, honeycrisp, and granny smith apples are the best.
• Store-bought crust: Using store-bought pie crust is an option. You will need 1 1/2 crusts for this recipe. Connect the pie crust to the half crust by pinching them together and then roll the chilled dough out into a larger circle using a rolling pin. The homemade crust is going to give you a flakier buttery crust, but if you are pinched for time or just plain do not want to make your own pie crust, store-bought gets the job done.
• Serving: Easy apple crisp galette is spectacular with a drizzle of caramel sauce over the top and served with a scoop of ice cream. If there happens to be any leftovers, I love to eat them the next day for breakfast with a dollop of plain greek yogurt.

Honestly, this open faced apple pie with oatmeal crumble topping is so fabulous I can’t stop thinking about it! However, if you really just want apple crisp my apple crisp recipe is here or for apple pie take a walk on the dark side over here. Don’t forget to give this all the stars if you make it and love it! Please share on your socials I would be forever grateful. It’s also super easy to pin it on your Pinterest dessert board right from the recipe card! Enjoy! XO Sheila