February is my Husband's birthday month. He loves pies! So it was a no brainer when I was trying to decide which gluten free recipe to conquer. I wanted to come up with a gluten free pie crust that was more than OK. I needed a pie crust that didn't just hold the filling temporarily acting as a dish to be discarded later, but a crust that would be devoured with the filling.
I found it!!!!!!
American Test Kitchen (ATK) did all the experimental work for me. They created a recipe for the crust as well as the perfect flour mix to use so the recipe will work well. I found it in this magazine style cookbook I picked up at the grocery store.
I found it!!!!!!
American Test Kitchen (ATK) did all the experimental work for me. They created a recipe for the crust as well as the perfect flour mix to use so the recipe will work well. I found it in this magazine style cookbook I picked up at the grocery store.
Always anxious to get started I wanted to make a crust right away. I didn't have all the ingredients to make ATKs flour so I tried their recipe with the gluten free all purpose flour that I had on hand. I don't know if this recipe will really work with the flour I had because I made a mistake while measuring the ingredients. I doubled the Xanthum Gum. That mistake I am sure doomed the pie crust to be tougher that it would have been if I had used the correct amount. The crust was easy to roll out and it baked up nicely except it never browned. I baked it longer than I normally would have hoping for the golden effect. This truly was a pie crust that was only useful as a dish to hold the filling. Only the really hard core "I will eat just about anything" type of person would eat this crust.
The next day I went to the store to buy the correct flours for the ATK recipe. Their recipe has white rice flour as the main flour with brown rice flour, potato starch and tapioca starch and non fat dry milk powder making up the rest of the recipe. I totally forgot the dry milk powder until just right now as I am writing this post; however, I think the crust worked fabulously. My husband told me to quit experimenting and to keep this recipe.
The crust was easy to work with if you floured your rolling pin. The only down fall with this recipe is that you have to chill the dough for at least 2 hours and then let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes before rolling it out. That means you have to think ahead. That is not something I am used to doing.
As you can see this crusts browns up nicely and is flaky. It has a great buttery taste to it. My son's comment was that he likes this crust way better than the glutenous variety. You really can't get better praise than that.