ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

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Are you daunted by the task of making a pie? (You’re not alone.) What if you don’t own a pie pan? Or you don’t have the time to wait for the pie dough to rest, then blind bake the shell, and then let it cool down? We have the answer for you. Make a galette. To make a galette, all you need is an oven, a sheet to bake it on, pie dough, and a filling. And you also have the chance to do it free-form and call it rustic. Galettes are much easier to make than pies. A galette—which originates from France—first meant “flat cake,” which could be used to describe unleavened flatbreads, very dense cakes, or even crepes. In the last century, however, it came to mean a free-form pie baked without the help of a shell. (In Italy, this is known as a crostata.) Whatever you call it, this rustic flat pie without a top crust is delicious. One of the reasons we like a galette is that, with the crust folded up and over part of the filling, it has more crunchy edges than a regular pie. A galette can be savory—heirloom tomatoes with Parmesan and thyme; zucchini with ricotta and lemon zest; potato leek with marjoram—to make an easy dinner. Typically, however, we think of galettes as sweet. Fill a galette with any fruits you desire. Autumn fruits like apple and pear are always good. However, here in the Northwest we also have blackberries, huckleberries, cranberries, quince, and persimmons. Depending on the season you could fill a galette with figs, stone fruit or rhubarb.Here we have given you a recipe using fresh fruit, spices and citrus zest. You could swap out the apples with pears or quince. If cranberries are not your thing, just leave them out and maybe replace with raisins, dates or another berry.You can make a winter fruit galette destined to please everyone at the Thanksgiving table. All the guests will rave about your dessert. You don’t have to tell them it was much easier to make than a pie.