Gluten-Free Pie Crust recipe

Cheri’s Gluten-Free Pie Crust Recipe

The inspiration for my pie crust came from a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website. Here is a link to their recipe : http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/gluten-free-pie-crust-recipe You will see that my recipe is essentially theirs with just a few tweaks and omissions.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups flour blend (1/2 cup brown rice flour, ½ cup almond meal flour, ¼ cup potato starch
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons cold butter
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons white vinegar

Very simple ingredients and notice the omission of xantham gum…yay!

1.      Combine flours, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. You can use a food processor, but I don’t have one so I use a bowl 

and a pastry blender. If you don’t know what a pastry blender lookup this link: www.williams-sonoma.com/products/stainless-steel-pastry-blender/ Use the pastry blender or a fork to really mix the flours together and make them fine with very few clumps.

*I store my flours in the freezer, which means they are cold while I’m making the dough and keeping everything cold is ideal.

2.      Cut in the butter. Make sure the butter is cold and straight from the fridge.

3.      Whisk the egg and vinegar in a small bowl with a fork and then add to the flour and butter mixture. I used my pastry blender to mix everything together. If the dough is really dry and not forming a ball try cutting an extra tablespoon of butter into the dough. Noticeable pieces of butter in the dough also known as marbling is okay and will create a flakier crust.

4.      Wrap ball of dough in plastic wrap and chill for an hour or overnight.

5.      Let dough sit at room temperature for 15 minutes. Then roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper. You can also sprinkle some extra flour on the parchment paper as added insurance that nothing will stick. Transfer to your pie dish.

6.      Pre-bake the empty crust at 375 degrees for 15-20 min or until lightly brown. Allow to cool to touch before adding the filling.

*The top edge of my crust was very susceptible to over browning even though I kept it covered with a shield the entire time it was in the oven. So use a shield and keep an eye on it.