The perfect fall dessert: rustic, warm, and full of flavor.

There’s a little pear tree in my backyard that never quite knows what season it is. Some years it blooms too early, others it holds onto its fruit like a secret. But when it gets it right—oh, it really gets it right. That’s when I know it’s time to make this galette.

I first learned to make a pear galette in my grandmother’s kitchen, a place that always smelled like cinnamon and something baking. It was a crisp October afternoon, and I must have been no older than ten. We had just come back from her neighbor Mr. Ellis’s yard, where we filled a wicker basket with pears that had fallen from his old tree. He always let us take as many as we wanted, as long as we promised to bring him a slice of whatever we made.

Back in the kitchen, my grandmother didn’t use a recipe—just a handful of flour, a stick of butter, and that quiet confidence that comes from years of baking by feel. I remember standing on a stool beside her, watching her hands work the dough, her wedding ring dusted with flour. She let me arrange the pear slices, carefully overlapping them like flower petals, and I felt so proud when she said I had “the touch.”

We ate that galette warm from the oven, sitting at her little round table with chipped blue plates and mismatched forks. She served it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of honey, and I remember thinking it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

Now, every fall, I make this version in her honor. It’s simple, rustic, and full of the same comfort I felt in her kitchen all those years ago.