Stone Fruit Season Is Here
Cherries, peaches, and plums are at their peak. Here is how our bakers are putting July's best fruit to work.
There is a short window every summer when stone fruit is so good you almost do not want to cook it — you just want to stand over the sink and eat a peach. Almost. Because the other thing ripe cherries, peaches, and plums are exceptionally good for is baking, and right now, in the middle of July, they are at their absolute peak.
The bakers on Ovendrop are leaning in hard. Hand pies, galettes, crumbles, and buckles are showing up on drop calendars all over Minnesota and Florida, and the good ones sell out fast.
Why the timing matters
Stone fruit does not wait. A peach that is perfect on Tuesday is past its best by the weekend, which is why so much summer baking happens on a tight, fruit-driven schedule. When a baker posts a cherry drop in July, they are almost certainly working with fruit bought that same week.
Twin Pines Pie Co. in Roseville, two sisters with a wall of county-fair ribbons, put it plainly:
You cannot fake ripe fruit. We build the whole summer schedule around what is actually good that week, not what we wish we had. A strawberry-rhubarb pie in July is a completely different thing than one in April.
If a windfall of ripe fruit has you wanting to bake it yourself, a rustic galette is the most forgiving place to start — no pie plate, no fussy lattice, just fruit folded into a round of dough. Here is the whole thing, summer peaches and all:
What to look for
- Hand pies — the easiest way to taste the season without committing to a whole pie.
- Rustic galettes — free-form, fruit-forward, and forgiving.
- Crumbles and buckles — where a little too much juice is a feature, not a flaw.
Our advice: when you see a stone-fruit drop, do not overthink it. Order it, pick it up, and eat it while the fruit is still singing.
Written by The Baker's Table for The Baker's Table.
