Gluten-Free Pie Crust Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is my gluten free pie crust so hard? ›

Too much water makes pie crusts tough, ESPECIALLY gluten-free crusts. An extra tablespoon or two can make your crust rock hard. Try to use the least amount of water listed.

Xanthan gum.

This acts as a binder (essentially a gluten replacement) and prevents the pie crust from being too crumbly and from tearing or cracking when you roll it out and use it to assemble the pie crust. It allows you to easily crimp the edges, create a lattice or anything else you might want to achieve.

Choose all-purpose flour or pastry flour. Don't skip or reduce the salt; it's critical for flavor. Various types of fat work well; choose your favorite. Add just enough liquid to hold the dough together.

Xantham gum is what helps hold the flour and pie ingredients together, and mimics what gluten does. Gluten is like glue, and is why doughs stay together. Without xantham gum, it will be crumbly and fall apart.

Because gluten-free batters contain more liquid than traditional versions, they typically take longer to bake. If you remove them from the oven too soon, you may develop a gummy, mushy texture.

In pie crust, you don't want gluten to form so you don't want to mix too much and overwork the dough. For a flaky crust, cut the butter so that chunks of butter about the size of walnut halves remain.

Without gluten you need to add a binder as a substitute. The most popular binders are xanthan gum, guar gum and psyllium husk powder. There are recipes that use flaxmeal, chia seeds or sweet rice flour (aka Mochiko, a type of glutinous rice flour) to assist with binding.

The three most common binders are xanthan gum, guar gum and psyllium husk powder. Each one works in a slightly different way to help create the structure we need to hold baked goods together.

While conventional wisdom has taught us not to overmix our batters, we've found most gluten-free batters simply need to be stirred for longer. If you're worried this will turn your muffins and cakes rubbery, have no fear. Gluten-free recipes need to have more structure.

I like to use pastry flour because it contains less gluten than all-purpose flour and therefore creates a more tender crust, but all-purpose flour will work just fine if that's what you have on hand. The “2” is fat. Butter is the most common type of fat used, but other solid fats will work as well.

What does vinegar do in a pie crust? ›

What does the vinegar do, exactly? Though the science is sketchy, a few professional pie bakers swear that it improves the texture of the crust, and they wouldn't dream of making pie dough without it. (Others swear by similarly acidic ingredients like lemon juice.)

A little acid goes a long way: Add a little acid to your dough. Whether it be fresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, acid retards gluten development. One teaspoon will do the job, and it can replace some of the water you add. The more pieces of butter, the better: Be sure to leave pea-sized pieces of butter.

Owing to the challenge of gluten-free flours to form a protein network that provides structure and strength to dough, breads produced in the absence of gluten tends to be flatter, denser, crummier, less chewy and less tasty.

Making a comparable crust

Free From Heaven states that gluten-free pastries are much more delicate to work with than glutinous pastries because they are prone to cracking due to a lack of moisture, and often the solution would be to add more liquid to the gluten-free dough.

Honey and agave as a sugar substitute can enhance moisture as well, but be aware that you should cut down slightly on the other liquids you are using in the recipe, as honey and agave are not solid ingredients. Adding an extra egg or oil can also help, but use caution.

Tough pie crusts are typically the result of working the dough too much (again, gluten). You don't need to make sure it's a perfectly uniform ball. “As long as the dough is mostly holding together, you don't need to spend a lot of time kneading it,” Susan Reid wrote for King Arthur Baking.

Lighten up your batters

So, you'll need to add a little more air into your batters while you're mixing. Sift your gluten-free flour blends before adding them to recipes to lighten them up and work in air (this is especially important for almond flour, since it tends to clump).

The additional xanthan gum makes gluten-free dough slightly stretchy and allows it to capture carbon dioxide bubbles during bulk fermentation (the initial rise). Once the dough is deflated and transferred to a bread pan, the xanthan structure breaks down.

Add just enough liquid to make the dough come together and don't knead it – a brief squish to press it all together will do. Too much water or movement develops gluten in the flour, which equals hard pastry.