Kitchen Confit Peach Week: Frank Stitt’s Peach Crostada

It’s summertime in the South and how have I not written about the peaches? I live minutes from South Carolina, which means peaches are everywhere. Peaches constantly line our kitchen counter, and they are usually eaten standing up over the sink so as not to make a mess with all their drippy and delightful juiciness. They’re so good as is that I can never bring myself to cook with them. This is true of most fruit. Why mess with a good thing, I ponder? But as it is Peach Week here at Kitchen Confit, I needed to find a recipe fantastic enough for which to sacrifice a peach.

We have waxed poetic about how much we love Frank Stitt here at Kitchen Confit. And for good reason. If you haven’t been to Birmingham, Alabama to eat at one of his amazing restaurants then put it on your list of things to do. S and I briefly lived in Birmingham last summer and for six short weeks we ate at one of Chef Stitt’s restaurants as often as possible. Since we’ve left Birmingham, I’ve often turned to Frank Stitt’s cookbook.  Unlike some celebrity chef cookbooks the recipes do work and they are completely unintimidating. I’ve cooked quite a bit from it and have never been anything but pleased with the results.

Back to peach week. I’ve already admitted that I don’t really swoon over all things chocolate, so I might as well admit that I don’t really like cake either. I love to bake cakes but I usually find them far too sweet and rich for my liking. Pie is a different story. I quite like pie, but I’m that girl who eats the filling and leaves the pastry. Or at least I used to be that girl. I made the peach crostada thinking the whole time that I probably wasn’t going to love it, but gosh was I wrong.

I don’t know what I loved the most. The crust was so flavorful and buttery. The peaches retained their lovely peachiness and the crostada was very moist.  It was a snap to make, and thank goodness the dough recipe made enough for two crostadas, as we will definitely be having this again very soon. There I was standing in the kitchen far too late to be eating pie and questioning why I had ever refused to baked with the fresh fruit of summer. The crostada wasn’t a waste of a blushing peach but rather a celebration of their wonderful flavor.

Peach Crostada
Excerpted from Frank Stitt’s Southern Table

For the Dough
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes and chilled
1/4 cup ice water

For the filling
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2 pounds ripe peaches, pitted, peeled, and sliced into 3/4-inch-thick wedges
1 large egg yolk, beaten with 1 teaspoon heavy cream for egg wash
1 tablespoon coarse or granulated sugar for topping

To prepare the dough, combine the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to blend. Add the butter and pulse until it is the size of small peas, about 15 times. With the processor running, add the ice water and process for about 10 seconds; stop the processor before the dough comes together. Turn the dough out onto a sheet of waxed paper, divide the dough in half, and shape into two disks. Wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (The dough can be refrigerated for 2 days or frozen up to 2 weeks; if it has been frozen, defrost the dough for 30 minutes at room temperature.)
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Roll one disk of dough into an 11-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Transfer to a baking sheet. (Reserve the second disk of dough for another use.)
To prepare the filling, combine the flour and sugar in a small bowl. Blend in butter with two knives until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
Place the peaches in the center of the dough circle on the baking sheet and top with the butter-sugar mixture. Begin draping the edges up and over, forming about 3 pleats. Crimp the pleats and press down to seal. Brush the pastry with the egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake the tart for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool on a rack.