Why don’t people bake with tomatoes more often?

Because they’re wet. Very wet. Plop a few thick pieces of fresh sliced tomato on a pastry crust, add a little salt and heat and the result is…goo. For tomatoes have a lot of water, did I mention that? Some varieties of tomatoes are 95% water, which is more water than is found in your typical watermelon by weight. So when baking with tomatoes, great care must be taken to prevent the bread portion of the recipe from getting waterlogged. Colicchio solves the problem by partially dehydrating the tomatoes first. It’s a neat trick, and a critical one, since he combines them with perhaps the most water-sensitive of all crusts, puff pastry. But as usual I’m getting bit ahead of myself. First the fruit…