Pie Crust- 365 Recipe Challenge

For today's recipe, I had to call in some back up.  One of my favorite Thanksgiving foods, it left over turkey pot pies.  However, this requires pie crust and gluten free pie crust can be hard to come by.  My friend Lauren is the Pie Queen, and her mom is attempting to be better about being gluten free so I invited her over for some gluten free pie crust making.  I bought some new gluten free flour, and she brought her non gluten free recipe and we started experimenting.  Pamela's Gluten Free Artisan Flour is supposedly pretty darn close to real flour so we hoped we would be able to use a regular recipe.  There is a pie crust recipe on the bag, but there were extra ingredients that weren't in Lauren's recipe (like sugar and butter), so we stuck with hers and hoped for the best.

You Will Need:
1 cup flour (we used Pamela's Gluten Free Artisan Flour)
1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp shortening (mmm...Crisco- don't freak out, there isn't that much per serving)
1/2 tsp salt
Very cold water (we used approximately 10 Tbsp for 4 crusts, so about 3 Tbsp.)
pastry cutter or two butter knives
rolling pin
pie plate

Directions:
In a large bowl, mix together the flour and salt.  Drop in the shortening, and cut it into the flour with either a pastry cutter or two butter knives.  Lauren uses a butter knives, but since I have a fancy pastry cutter, I insisted on using it.  Stop once the flour mixture resembles chunky sand (isn't that a pretty mental image?).  Start mixing in the cold water, a little at a time.  

Think really old play dough.  It is a lot drier than what you think dough should look and feel like.

The mixture will still seem dry, but when you can squeeze it in your hand and it holds it's shape, it is done. Form into a mound, and turn it out onto a lightly floured counter or pastry mat, and roll in to a pie crust shape- a little bigger than your pie plate.

Kept have to stop rolling and fix the cracks.  All hope was lost  when I tried to put it in the pie plate.

This was when we realized, the gluten free flour wasn't exactly like regular flour.  If you are using gluten free flour, I recommend skipping the rolling step and just dump it straight into the pie plate.  

Faking a perfectly rolled pie crust.

Without the gluten, it tends to fall apart, so just press it around in the pan until you have a pie crust. Make the edges pretty, and fill with your favorite pie filling.

Pumpkin...yum. 

If you quadrupled the recipe like I did, just place the dough balls individually in a plastic bag and freeze until you are ready to use them.

What did we learn:
The gluten free flour is not exactly like real flour. It tasted good, but the crust seemed thinner than regular pie crust.  I suspect this is why they had the extra ingredients- to stretch it. I don't know the chemistry behind this, so I can't say for sure.  It doesn't bother me, but if you are trying to fool other people, I would either add the extra stuff on the back of the bag, or just make extra crust.  It was just as easy to make 4 crusts as it was one, so I would just divide the 4th crust equally among the other 3 to end up with a little more crust.  As usual, it is a texture issue with gluten free, but this was pretty darn close.   Also, their web site suggests adding additional water to some recipes- just be careful it doesn't get sticky.  Once cooked it wasn't crumbly, it cut beautifully, held up on the plate and most of all, it actually browned.

Even if you aren't gluten free, I recommend this pie crust recipe.  It was really easy to make.  Every other time I have tried to make crust I have over worked it or made it really complicated buy using the food processor.  All you really need is a bowl, and two butter knives (or pastry cutter).

Happy Holidays!