Mushroom and Cheese Galette

This mushroom and cheese galette is jam packed with creamy boldness that leaves you longing for just one more bite long after you’re full.

Boy this recipe is a pretty far cry from where it began. I came across a mushroom and cheese galette recipe God only knows where and I saved it in a place of my wanting to try recipes go. I will not give more info than that because it will stress my Armo out to no end by my very unsystematic way to my madness.

Eventually I got around to actually reading the recipe closely I realized it was truly a “gem”. Those quotes are bolded on purpose because the original recipe has less than stellar eyeball score. No this has nothing to do with ego, but everything to do with people telling me they don’t like to cook because the food they cook is not good. If you aren’t the kind of person to go rogue with a recipe, I want you to be able to recognize factors that will help to determine if you’ll like the end result. In typical Nicole fashion, I will give many details in what I saw in the original recipe. If this sort of thing will bore you, just scroll to the bottom for the recipe because it is delicious and you should make it.

One thing I noticed as I scanned the ingredient list in the original recipe was it used goat (no go for me) cheese, cream cheese and salt was the only spice. Is salt even a spice – I don’t think so but I don’t know what to call it. Cream cheese while I’m not opposed to it and often love, is a mild flavor and will easily mute other flavors.

The recipe called for browning shallots which I liked because it’s milder than onion so won’t compete with the shrooms. The browning will deepen the flavor while bringing a hint of sweetness to all the savory.

The galette crust was made with all butter and a tad of sugar. Nothing seems off there, but I tend to go with partial whole grain crusts for these things and I always drop the sugar in crusts when it’s savory. In addition, the recipe called for yogurt and vinegar. That sounded interesting and something I would do. I decided to sub in buckwheat for part of the flour because it brings another flavor profile to the mushrooms and buckwheat has no gluten which makes it easy to have a super tender crust. Really use any crust you like, even a store bought one. I’ve used bought crusts many times and will happily admit it. If you’re going for eye appeal, buckwheat is not the way to go.

The OG spreads a layer of goat cheese on the bottom of the crust. I think this is to create a moisture barrier between the vegetables and the crust. Good idea, I played off of that idea and used one cheese as a barrier and a second cheese to mix into the mushrooms. The recipe did not call for cooking the mushrooms. I thought this was cray cray because they are packed with moisture and I’m not sure how it would be possible to not have a sopping mess without precooking them. This could have been an oversite in the directions because the onions were precooked. You can’t blind bake a gallete and if Great British Baking Show taught me anything, it’s that soggy bottoms are completely unacceptable. I would cook my mushrooms.

I added in some spices to enhance the mushrooms but not to over take them.  I added eggs because I wanted to lighten the texture. To be transparent, I didn’t try it sans eggs so not sure if this really was a necessary change. At the end, I decided to give it a quick squeeze of lemon and garnish with parsley to freshen and brighten the dish.

Mushroom ad Cheese Gallette

Dough Ingredients
120 g (1 c) AP flour
180 g (1.5 c) buckwheat flour
¼ tsp salt
1 c unsalted butter
¾ whole milk yogurt
3 Tbl vinegar

Dough Directions
In a food processor, pulse the flours and salt. Cut the butter into ½” chunks, add it to the food processor and pulse until it’s pea size. Dump the mixture into a bowl and make a well into the center. Mix the vinegar and yogurt together and pour into the well. Mix with your hands until well combined. The dough will be soft and a little sticky. If the mixture doesn’t come all the way together, you can add a little water. Divide it into half. Take a large piece of saran wrap and add a blob of the dough on top, cover it with saran wrap and flatten into a disk. Repeat and refrigerate at least one hour.

Filling Ingredients
shy of ½ c avocado oil (or other high heat oil)
salt
10 oz shallots
6 ounces oyster mushrooms
24 ounces cremini mushrooms
1 tsp marjoram
2 tsp sumac
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp crushed red pepper
2 tsp worcheshire sauce
1 Tbl garlic cloves
6 ounces Gruyere
2 eggs
8 ounces sliced Munster cheese
1 lemon
2 Tbl chopped fresh parsley

Filling Directions
Wash your mushrooms well and pat dry. If you’re in the camp that you shouldn’t wash them, read the notes this post.

Add ¼ c of oil to a 3.5 quart (or larger) saute pan. Heat it to medium high heat.

Cut the edges off the shallots, slice them in half pole to pole, and peel off the dry layer. If the shallot is large, slice it into thirds, you don’t want the pieces to be more than a ½” thick.

When the oil shimmers, add the shallots. You should hear a sizzle that keeps sizzling with little bubbles in the oil around the shallots. If you don’t hear it, remove the shallots, let your oil get hotter and try again. If your bubbles are out of control and oil is splattering, time to turn down that heat some. Sprinkle 1/8 tsp of salt on top of the shallots.

Take your oyster mushrooms and slice them about ¼” thick then slice into 1/2” strips.

Play pick-a-boo with your shallots, if the bottoms are golden brown, flip them over. If your pan has uneven heat, they might not all brown at the same rate. When both sides are brown, put the shallots on a large plate.

Add 1 Tbl of oil, if your pan is running dry. Drop the heat a tad to cook the mushrooms. Add the oyster mushrooms and 1/16” tsp of salt.

If your mushrooms are browning but haven’t reduced in size much, your heat is too high.

Start slicing the cremini mushrooms into ¼ inches.

Flip the oyster mushrooms over when one side is brown. By this point, they’ve shrunken in size so go ahead push to one side and add some cremini in the open space. You don’t want the mushrooms touching because the texture and flavor will be different if you do so.

Sprinkle a little salt on the mushrooms, you’ll need about ¼ tsp total for all of the cremini so eyeball how much you need in each batch. It will look like it’s not much salt, but mushrooms shrink a lot and cheese is salty. Go easy my friend.

Remove the oyster mushrooms when both sides are brown and put it on a large plate. You’ll add more cremini in their place. When one side of the cremini is really golden brown, remove them from the pan. There’s no need to brown both sides. If the pan starts to get dry, add a little more oil. Keep adding the cremini as space opens.

Shred the Gruyere. The large holes on a box grater work perfectly.

Mince the garlic. Cut off the dry end of the clove. Lay the flat side of a knife on top of the clove (keep holding the handle), make a fist with your other hand and give the knife a good pound down with the pinky side of the fist. It should slightly crush the clove and pop open the skin. Remove the skin and cut finely.

Once the mushrooms are finished cooking, turn off the heat. Add the mushrooms and shallots back to the pan. Sprinkle the marjoram, sumac, black pepper, crushed red pepper, garlic, and worcestershire sauce on top. Mix it well. If you evenly sprinkle, the mixing will go quicker. Add the Gruyere cheese on top and mix in. Taste. Add salt if needed.

Whisk the two eggs in a small bowl. Pour almost all of them (leave about ¼ of the liquid in the bowl), into the filling mixture and stir in.

Assemble
Preheat oven to 400. Remove the dough from the fridge. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Sprinkle a little flour on the parchment (cornmeal gives the galette a nice texture).

Remove the plastic wrap from one disk of dough, add the dough to the parchment, sprinkle flour on top, and use a rolling pin to roll the dough in an oval to about ¼” thick. Depending on the pan and/or rolling pin, this might not work so well. You can always use a pint glass to roll it out or you can put the parchment directly on the counter. After the dough is rolled out, slide the parchment onto the sheet pan. This dough is very soft and the traditional way of transferring rolled out dough always failed for me. Yes, this way is cheating and I don’t care.

Repeat with the second one. Add the muenster cheese slices in a single layer on the dough leaving the edges (at least an inch exposed). Depending on how thick your cheese slices are, it might cover a little less of the top, just roll with it. If you have extra slices, save them for a snack later or double up a layer here and there.

Add half of the filling on each piece of dough. Spread it on top of the cheese layer. Take an edge and fold it over the filling. Grab an adjacent edge and fold over the filling, it should overlap with the previous fold a little. Repeat on the second galette. Using two fingers or a pastry brush, coat the exposed dough with the leftover egg.

Place the galettes in your fridge for at least 15 minutes if you have the room. I usually don’t have the room so I typically skip this step. Slide those bad boys into the oven and bake. It should take about 45-55 minutes for the dough to crisp up and the cheese to take on a light golden color. If your galettes are on different racks in the oven, the bottom one will not brown as quickly, so you can either swap their places about 40 minutes into baking or remove the top one when it’s finished and let the bottom one cook a few minutes longer.

Allow galettes to cool about 10 minutes, before slicing. Give each piece a little squeeze of lemon and sprinkle parsley or green onions on top before you serve it.



Notes
You can use a frying pan if you don’t have a saute pan. If you use a frying pan, when it’s time to mix the filling ingredients together, you’ll mix them in a large bowl because the pan won’t be big enough to mix in. You can put the shallots and mushrooms straight into the bowl instead of on a plate.

We’re using a fairly high heat when cooking the shallots, so we get the good flavor of caramelization, without them turning to mush. The large pieces also helps the texture stay intact.

If you don’t have a cheese grater, no worries. Get a sharp knife, slice the cheese thin (almost as thin as you can go), stack the cheese and slice that into match sticks. Run a knife cross ways to get small squares.

I won’t fight you on the cheese selection here, but go for good melty ones. For you St. Louis peeps, I even tried it with provel, and yes, it was very good.

This dough is too soft to use as a pie crust. Works for galettes, but not pie. Trust me – don’t even try it.

The garnish needs to be fresh. Dried herbs will not work for this. You can sub in green onions, cilantro, fennel tops, etc.