A Good Crust

A Recipe from “Galette!”

Published November 17, 2025

½ cup (115 g) water
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2¾ cups (345 g) spooned and leveled all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1 tablespoon sugar
1½ teaspoons Diamond Crystal or ¾ teaspoon Morton kosher salt
2½ sticks (10 ounces/285 g) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes, chilled

In a liquid measuring cup or a small bowl, combine the water and the vinegar. Place this in the freezer while you work on the next steps.

In a large bowl, use your fingers or a fork to combine the ﬂour, sugar, and salt.

Add the butter to the large bowl and use your fingers or a fork to gently toss around the butter to coat it in the ﬂour mixture. Use your fingers to smash and rub the butter into the ﬂour mixture until it forms ﬂat pieces mostly the size of cannellini beans (about 3/4 inch) with some smaller (think chickpeas and lentils; about 1/2 and 1/4 inch). The mixture should still look dry and crumbly.

Remove the water-vinegar mixture from the freezer. Drizzle half of the water-vinegar mixture over the ﬂour-butter mixture. Working from the bottom of the bowl up, use your fingers or a fork to gently toss the mixture together, as if you were tossing a salad. Drizzle over another splash of the water-vinegar mixture and toss. Continue to drizzle and toss until a shaggy, chunky mixture forms. It should not be completely combined yet, but there also should be no totally dry areas of ﬂour (look for pebbles of moistened ﬂour, not pure powder).

You may not need the full amount of water-vinegar mixture. When in doubt, err on the dry side: You can always add liquid, but you can’t take it away.

Here’s how to know if you’re in a good place: Pick up a handful of the mixture and squish it. It should mostly hold its stuck-together shape; if not, drizzle an additional 1 teaspoon water-vinegar mixture on the driest areas and toss again, repeating until it holds together.

Dump the mixture onto a clean work surface and use your hands to pat it together into a rectangular mass about 1 inch thick. If you ﬁnd any more areas that look totally dry, drizzle them with another 1 teaspoon water-vinegar mixture.

Use your hands or a bench scraper to fold the mass of dough over itself. Press down the dough until it’s about 1 inch thick again. (The dough shouldn’t be moist or sticky, but if so, sprinkle it with a bit of ﬂour as you fold.) Repeat folding and pressing down the dough two or three times. As you fold the dough over itself, the shaggy mass will form into a cohesive dough (this is also going to help the crust bake off extra-flaky). The butter should not blend all the way in, and the surface of the dough should look like marble or wood grain.

Divide the dough in half, placing each half on a piece of plastic wrap.

Wrap each piece of dough in the plastic wrap, then press into a round about 3/4 inch thick. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 5 days. (Save the other disk of dough in the freezer for up to 3 months.)

Lightly dust a work surface with ﬂour and line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Remove the rested dough from the refrigerator and let it sit out for 5 to 10 minutes (this allows the dough to soften slightly, making it easier to roll out, without getting too warm). Unwrap the dough, sprinkle it with ﬂour, and use a rolling pin to roll it out, flipping and turning the dough and adding more ﬂour as needed to avoid sticking, into a round about 13½ inches in diameter and between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Place the dough on the prepared sheet pan.