If you’re looking for something akin to a zucchini pizza or a summery side dish, this goat cheese and zucchini galette is perfect. It screams summer eating.
What is a galette? If you’ve never had one, it’s sort of like a free form pie or a tart. It’s a pie crust but there is no dish. It’s much more rustic, and it doesn’t involve any getting pie crust into the dish or crimping the crust or worrying about shrinkage. Roll it out, fill it, fold the edges, bake. Voila!
Now, a lot of galettes are indeed sweet. This zucchini galette was developed using the base of my Balsamic Roasted Strawberry Galette, and changing the filling to savory and switching sprinkling the crust with flaky salt instead of coarse sugar.
Normally, when I make pastries like scones I grate the frozen butter into the dough. You could totally do that, however I usually use a pastry cutter when making pie crust as that’s how I learned and that’s always worked for me. If you don’t have either, you can also use a fork or even your hands to sort of smoosh the dough.
Goat Cheese Zucchini Galette Key Ingredients
- Zucchini – You can find zucchini year round in the store, so this can be made anytime but zucchini is in season in the summer so this is why I chose to make it. This would very easily be made with yellow squash if you don’t enjoy or can’t find zucchini.
- Goat Cheese – I used a garlic herb goat cheese to skip the step of using fresh herbs and spices to make the dish more flavorful.
- Vodka – You might be thinking it’s odd that there’s vodka in the crust of a zucchini galette. If you don’t want to use alcohol, this is 100% skippable. I have tested the crust with and without it and it works. Vodka in pie crust helps the dough be a little bit more workable, without developing extra gluten. It’s a very small amount of vodka so even if it didn’t bake off you couldn’t taste it even, but it does and you’ll never know it was there.
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Ingredients
Crust
- 200 g AP Flour
- ¾ tsp Salt
- 8 tbsp Unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp Vodka
- 4-5 tbsp Ice water
Filling
- 1 md/lg Zucchini
- 4 oz Herb goat cheese room temperature
Misc
- 1 Egg
- 1 tbsp Flaky sea salt
- 1 tsp Extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Take your butter and cut it into about ½" pieces. Place in a small bowl and put in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
- Mix together flour and salt in a medium-large bowl.
- Dump frozen butter into flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter, cut butter into flour until it is about pea size bits.
- Add 1 tbsp of vodka and 4 tbsp of ice water. Mix until dough comes together, adding extra tbsp of water if needed. Dough should come together but not be wet.
- Pat dough into a 5-6" disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.
- After about 3.5 hours, or about 30-45 minutes before you take your chilled dough out, slice your zucchini into ⅛ inch slices. Lay the slices in an even layer on paper towel and lightly salt.
- Allow the zucchini to sweat for about 30 minutes. Blot with a paper towel before they go onto the galette.
- Preheat oven to 375°F
- When dough has sufficiently chilled, take out and place on a floured parchment sheet. Roll dough out until about ⅛" thick. Dough should be mostly round but does not need to be perfect.
- Slide your parchment sheet with dough onto a baking sheet.
- Spread your goat cheese over the center of the dough, leaving a 1-2 inch border around the edges.
- Arrange your zucchini slices over the goat cheese in whichever design is the most pleasing to you. I find rows or circular to be the easiest.
- Take a piece of the edge and fold over, towards the center. Take the section next to it and repeat around until your galette has a crust.
- Lightly brush the zucchini with olive oil. If you have olive oil cooking spray, this will work too. Brush the crust with beaten egg, and sprinkle with flaky sea salt.
- Bake on center rack of oven for about 45-55 minutes, until crust is golden brown and zucchini is starting to be browned.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before serving. Enjoy!
