Gata

Ingredients

• Flour for the dough500 g
• Butter200 g
• Soured cream200 ml
• Dry yeast5 g
• Flour for the filling250 g
• Butter for the filling150 g
• Sugar200 g
• Vanilla1 tsp
• Egg yolk — for glazing1
• Salt1 pinch

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a dough from the flour, softened butter, soured cream, yeast and salt and work it ten minutes.

   14 min

2. 2

   Wrap the dough in film and chill it an hour.

   62 min

3. 3

   Rub the filling flour with the cold butter, sugar and vanilla to a damp crumb.

   12 min

4. 4

   Roll the dough into a rectangle, brush it with butter, fold it in three and chill it twenty minutes.

   25 min

5. 5

   Repeat the rolling and folding once more, then roll it out a centimetre thick.

   20 min

6. 6

   Spread the filling over half the sheet, fold the other half over and seal the edges.

   12 min

7. 7

   Score a pattern with a fork, brush with yolk and bake at 180 °C for forty minutes, to a deep gold.

   45 min

About the dish

The filling is dry and crumbly: flour is rubbed with butter and sugar to the texture of damp sand, and no liquid goes into it at all.

The dough is rolled, buttered, folded and chilled — twice over. The layers give the texture that separates gata from an ordinary cake.

The pattern scored on top with a fork is not only decoration: the punctures let steam out and stop the top ballooning above the filling.

Worth knowing

• — The filling has to stay dry. A wet one runs during baking and turns gata into an ordinary sugared cake.
• — Chill the dough between folds without fail. Warm butter is absorbed and the layering disappears.
• — Cut gata only when completely cold. Hot, it crumbles and no neat diamonds come out of it.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

7 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

62 g

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