Wild Blueberry and Pear Galettes

This post is pretty much going to be dedicated to the awesomeness of bilberries. First up if you don’t know what they are, don’t worry you are definitely not alone. After a basic tally amongst my friends it seems a lot of people don’t really know what there amazing little berries are. I had to google it to show them.

Bilberries are basically wild blueberries, but smaller and oh so much better…the best things come in small packages right! They’re a little sour if you eat them raw, but once cooked they turn into the richest gooey berry flavour, making them perfect for jam and pies. I’ve been picking bilberries ever since I can remember. My mum instilled her own health hippieness in me from a young age, we grew up recycling long before it became cool and weekends often meant going for berry picking ‘walks’ in the woods. So feeling nostalgic I went for a little forgaging expedition in the woods the other day and came back with two large punnets of bilberries, ready for some dessert making.

But realistically I know most of us don’t have the time to go foraging for bilberries, so where can you get them? Well there’s the catch, you can’t easily buy bilberries in the shops unfortunately. I think you can get some preserved in jars online which may work well. Otherwise you can obviously just use blueberries. I expect this is mainly because they are actually a pain in the a** to pick, they are a few small berries on bushes surrounded by tiny leaves so it takes forever to try and pick them without ending up with a punnet full of leaves. Good thing my mum had a few free child laborers at hand. But maybe if you have some children that need entertaining maybe instead of going to that strawberry picking farm, head for some woods and try and find some bilberries (it’s free!)

As the weather turns colder and I’m craving more comfort food, I decided to try my hand at making the still so popular galette. I wanted to make a slightly healthier version of basic pastry, but surprisingly there are not many recipes out there for pastry made without white flour, so I had to experiment a bit, but I think it ended up with a pretty good result. I used a mix of rye and spelt flour which gives the crust a really nice nutty flavour, which works well with the richness of the berries. I used pears as a base for the berries, but apples or even peaches also work really well. One thing to note, that as I use less sugar than normal pastry recipes, these don’t keep as long as most tarts would, so I recommend keeping in the fridge if, you don’t eat it all straight away!

Wild Blueberry and Pear Galettes

Makes 1 large or 3 smaller galettes

Ingredients

pastry
140g / 1 cup rye flour
140g / 1 cup spelt flour
120g butter
3-4 tbsp ice cold water
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp brown sugar
zest of 1/2 lemon
pinch of salt

filling
3 pears (or apples/peaches)
200g / 2 cups bilberries/blueberries
juice 1/2 lemon

Instructions

Make the pastry:

Measure the flour, butter, sugar and salt into a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingers until it resembles large breadcrumbs. If using a mixer pulse on a low speed with the paddle attachment until large crumbs form.