22 November 2006

Pie Crust Promises?

Whoa. I have never ever had that little trouble with a gluten free pie crust before. I mean, at least one of them usually breaks badly enough that I have to patch it. There were absobloodylutely no problems this time. I made one or two minor modifications, so for the benefit of any fellow celiacs who wander here, I'll post the original recipe with the modifications.

I use Bette Hagman's Vinegar Pastry from the revised edition of The Gluten-Free Gourmet, but I double the recipe. Original:

2 c white rice flour ~~~~~~~~ 1.5 c tapioca flour ~~~~~ 1.5 c cornstarch
2 rounded t xanthan gum ~~~ 1.5 t salt ~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2 T sugar
1.5 c shortening ~~~~~~~~~~ 2 eggs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2 T vinegar
4-6 T icewater

For the most part I left the dry ingredients alone, but I did use 1 c brown rice flour in place of half of the white rice flour and I decreased the salt slightly. Instead of shortening, I used 1.25 c butter (softened by 30 seconds in the microwave), with 0.25 c olive oil on standby. I didn't use all the olive oil, but I find that adding a bit of oil makes the crust much MUCH easier to handle. I probably used about 1 T of it. I also increased the eggs to 3. One other change: the recipe says to leave the dough in the refrigerator until you're ready to use it. I've always found that it comes out horribly dry, so this time I didn't put it in the fridge at all. No clue which change had the most effect, but I was quite quite pleased. I'm curious to see how the leftover crust handles when I make it into pie crust cookies. :^D

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