This dough was shockingly pliable. It was also tender, flaky and tasted like a damn fine pie crust.
- 1 cup gluten free flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1)
- 4 tablespoons butter (frozen. I just keep butter in the freezer for this.)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon xanthum gum*
- 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoons liquor (I used 2 of brandy and 1 of triple sec)
- 1 tablespoon sour cream**
- 1 egg yolk
Mix dry ingredients together. Grate the frozen butter into the mix and stir it with your fingers to coat. Add wet ingredients and gently knead together in the bowl until it forms a ball. (Note: you might want to back off on the liquor depending on the humidity of your home. Or you might need to add more. A neutral spirit, like vodka, won’t add any flavor. Here’s the science behind this.)
Dust a surface with cornstarch and put the ball on it. Dust more cornstarch on top and cover with a sheet of parchment paper. Roll out into a rough rectangle. Fold the long sides in toward the middle. Fold the ends in towards the middle and then fold the whole thing in half like a book. Fold in half again to make a little squarish block. (Credit for this step to Stella Parks)
Dust with cornstarch again and put the parchment paper back on. Roll it out to the size of your pieplate. As you start this the pieces will slide around a lot. Don’t worry about it, they’ll come together in the end. Also, I highly, highly recommend a pastry scrapper to ease the crust up off the bottom sheet.
Now… in theory, it will stick a little to the parchment paper on top, and you can use that to transfer it to the pie plate. In practise, it’ll depend on how much you dusted it, your horoscope sign, and the favor of the Gods.
*What’s with the xanthum gum? It adds elasticity, which normally comes from gluten. Don’t go overboard though, because it can also turn things into gummy awful servings of sadness.
**What’s with the sour cream? Pie dough “consists of three phases: a water/flour mixture, pure pockets of fat, and a flour/fat paste” What this does is create the flour/fat paste phase with zero fuss. You could back off on the butter because of this, but why would you. Because butter. (I might be from the South.) It also adds the little bit of extra elasticity that gluten-free crusts need.
