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Gluten Free Pie Crust Methods |
by Ashley Crosby
When you're in your mid-twenties, doing the switch to a gluten-free diet, you end up craving things. Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter what age you are. I switched to a gluten free diet less than two months before Thanksgiving, so you know where my brain was, don't you?
PIE.
What was I going to do without the flaky goodness of PIE?
Over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, I learned a few tricks, some from other websites, some from my own experimentations.
- You can always still attempt to make a standard, gluten-free flour pie crust. Yes, you can. All of my attempts were unsatisfactory. Sometimes they tasted all right, but flakiness is very hard to get. If you do decide to attempt a standard flour crust, let me give a few suggestions.
- If you're like me and you like to cut your pie dough by hand, you might as well give up on that. It's so gooey that the only thing you'll want to use is a food processor. Throw in your ingredients and blend.
- If you want to roll it out, do it between two pieces of wax paper. Any other method will frustrate the crap out of you. Honestly, I've become a fan of just smashing it into the pie plate. Usually comes out flakier.
- The best flavor blends are to use two different flours and one starch. Be sure to look for this when choosing your recipes (or if you want to do a straight conversion from an wheat flour recipe, find an all-purpose baking mix that includes some kind of starch). My personal favorite blend is white rice flour, sorghum flour, and potato starch.
- Don't forget your xanthan or guar gum!
- Mixes can really be your friend, and they can be very good as well. Authentic Foods makes a pie crust that is based around almond meal and rice flour that makes for a perfect accent to fruit pies. You can find more information on this mix here. Let me give a few suggestions:
- This is an expensive pie crust, significantly more expensive than those terrible shells you can buy in the store. Only use this for a base crust, and never buy enough for your top. For toppings I'd recommend making some kind of crumble out of butter, rice flour, cinnamon, and sugar. It compliments the crust well.
- I tried to roll this mix out and was met with complete disaster. Mix it up by the instructions on the bag, pour into your pie plate, and press. It takes a little practice to get it the same thickness all over, but you'll get it down.
- Let cake mixes work for you. And don't let an experiment disaster get you down. I found doing cake mix brownies doesn't work right with gluten free cake mixes. But, once baked, they make great crumbs, and those crumbs can be a great crust. Mix the cake mix with one egg and 3/4 cup of water. Bake it like you would a cake or brownies; if you get lucky, you get brownies. If you don't, you're in luck and you can make a pie crust with it. Let it dry out then crumble it. Spread those crumbles over a cookie sheet and bake at around 300º for anywhere between ten and twenty minutes to get the rest of the moisture out. Take them out to cool, mix with melted butter, and press into a pie tin. Cook at 350º for ten minutes to help set it up, then it's ready to use.
- This is, obviously, time consuming, meaning it takes a number of days. One day to bake the mix, then the drying process. This is not the quick method.
- It is cheaper than most store bought pie mixes, so that is something to consider.
- This kind of crust works great with chiffon pies. Cream pies, mousses, and chiffon cheesecake are great for this method.
I think these methods show that a little creativity that give some great results. But you can't be afraid to experiment. Good luck on your pie making ventures!
Ashley Crosby is the webmaster of Litterbox Magazine. When not working on the magazine, she is currently spending the majority of her time working on (or at least thinking about) her MFA thesis.
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