My hero Alton Brown insists that any a good pie crust worth its salt should be the perfect combination of tender and flaky, and since he's my hero he must be right! Unfortunately, finding good flakiness without wheat-gluten in the dough is a true challenge. This is because the flakiness in a good pie crust (or croissant, or phyllo dough) comes from proper layering of fat and flour, and good layers happen when the gluten is in the dough to stretch out the flour around the thin layers of butter.
So we can't get full-flakiness without wheat, but with a little experimentation and tips I've learned over the years, I've found we can get awfully close. We can't get big, wide flakes, but with a little extra binding, acid and xantham gum, we can still construct smaller flakes that taste great.
My pie crust recipe tastes flaky and falls apart in your mouth in a way that feels like a wheat-gluten crust. It's just that the flakes are more diminutive and a tad more crumbly, so it won't hold the pie together quite as firmly on the plate. The bottom line: it tastes the same; each slice just needs a little more care when being moved from pie-plate to dessert-plate to mouth.
And so versatile. I can't be bothered with remembering different recipes for covered
pies, dessert pies and savory pies, so I just use this one all the time. I've used it for apple pie (more details below), quiche, and the July-4th fruit tart pictured here.A warning when making these little beauties: since there is no gluten in the dough, it will not stretch. Even though the dough balls up and can be formed into a disk just like a regular pie dough, when you roll it out it will not hold together to be lifted. What this means for the gluten-free pie-maker is that you cannot pick the dough up off the counter and into a pie plate. The rolled-out dough will just fall apart. The only way I've found to make the transfer is the invert-method: be sure to roll the dough out on top of wax paper, invert the greased pie plate onto the dough, then flip the whole thing over so the wax paper ends up on top. Finally, carefully peel off the wax paper and repair any holes and breakups by patching.
Here are some more details on how I use this pie crust with other recipes.
- I love this apple pie recipe, but: with my crust and I leave off the top crust (it is hard to put in place over a pie). I also modify the recipe to simply use a gluten-free flour blend in place of the regular flour called for in the filling and streusel topping.
- The pictured "flag tart" above used this lemon-curd recipe by Emeril with my crust and improvised berries and homemade whipped cream for the flag. Thanks to my sister Suzy who came up with the design for this tart.
- I also love Emeril's classic Quiche Lorraine recipe. I use my own crust and add 1/2 cup of carmelized onions for extra goodness.
