C – Gone are the days of horrible gluten free pies.
It was a tough struggle for a few months when my husband and I decided to start our gluten free and wheat free adventure. Horrible flour with beans and weird grainy textures. It even felt weird in my belly. If I ate too much of it I would get a stomach ache.
Finally I started to research my own gluten free flour mix and it ended up being really great. I don’t have stomach aches any more, and it’s been pretty easy to make.
Since this month is National Pie Month, I wanted to share a great gluten free pie crust recipe. One thing I noticed with gluten free doughs is that they crumble easily and are hard to handle, if you don’t use the right ingredients.
There are two ingredients that make this pie dough better … and many of the gluten free doughs out there. I use a little Xanthan Gum and an egg. Once you have these two ingredients, the dough holds together and is really easy to shape.
Another thing that I have been doing is grating cold butter into the pie dough, instead of cubing it and working my way though it. Grating the butter allows the pieces of the butter to be smaller and easier to distribute all over the flour mixture.
I used to use a food processor. But, I always seemed to over mix my dough or leave big chunks of butter. With this recipe, I really feel good about making pies now. It’s a lot easier than it was before.
| Gluten Free Pie Week 2016: Gluten Free Pie Crust |
- 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp brown rice flour
- 6 Tbsp potato starch
- 3 Tbsp tapioca starch
- 3 Tbsp rice flour
- 1 tsp Xantham gum
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 tsp coconut sugar or any sugar you desire
- 8 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled
- 1 egg
- 2 Tbsp ice cold water
- Grate the butter with a cheese grater and place it in the freezer until ready to use.
- In a mixing bowl, place brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, rice flour and Xantham gum. Mix well and set a side 2 tablespoons for dusting.
- Mix in salt and sugar into the flour mixture. Mix well.
- Place chilled grated butter into the flour mixture. Mix and break the butter into small pieces throughout the dough.
- Add the egg and ice water. Mix well. The dough shouldn’t be sticky and come off the sides of bowl.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before using.
- Pie dough can be made up to seven days in advanced. Leave the pie dough out for about 30 minutes to remove some of the chill off before rolling if made more than a day in advance.
- Use for any pie recipe you like.
- Enjoy!
Since the dough is gluten free, I don’t worry about over mixing the dough. My dough remains flaky … even after I re-roll it a few times. It’s amazing.
I don’t think I will ever go back to regular pie dough again. This recipe is great.