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America’s Test Kitchen’s Julia Collin Davison explains what makes our gluten-free pie dough the best.
Perfect pie dough has just the right balance of tenderness and structure. The former comes from fat, the latter from the long protein chains, called gluten, that form when flour mixes with water. Too little gluten and the dough won’t stick together; too much and the crust turns tough. So presumably we would face mostly a structural issue with a gluten-free dough, since gluten-free flours are naturally low in protein. As our first step, we swapped in our gluten-free flour blend for the wheat flour in all the pie dough recipes the test kitchen has developed over the years. We produced workable doughs in every case, but an all-butter dough (which includes sour cream for tenderness) had the necessary richness to stand up to the starchiness of the gluten-free flour blend and was clearly the best starting point. Although we weren’t surprised to find that the dough was still too soft and lacked structure, we were taken aback by how tough it was; on its own, the sour cream was not sufficient to tenderize a gluten-free dough. We solved the structural problem easily with the addition of a modest amount of xanthan gum, but flakiness and tenderness were still elusive. In an effort to further tenderize our dough, we tested ingredients that are known to tenderize: baking soda, lemon juice, and vinegar. Vinegar was the clear winner, producing a pie crust that was not only tender, but also light and flaky.
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Really you took the dairy route? That's like easy it's easier to be gluten-free than dairy-free. I have kids that are both so it would have been great for you taking a more challenging Road and used almond or oat milk and a vegan butter.
Mine came out gummy. Any idea what went wrong?
I made a pie last night with this dough recipe from the book. However, my dough had these specks of yellow/ brown throughout. I wasn't expecting that. Haven't cut into the pie yet, but it looks beautiful.
C'mon test kitchen, I thought you would do better than my everyday common knowledge about baking gluten-free pie crusts. I actually make mine vegan now too.
I make my gluten free cakes and pastries with these ingredients and of course some almond flour as well
Recipes like this help people like my mother who isn't allowed to eat Gluten anymore since it was discovered she has a wheat gluten intolerance
Too bad, My mother is Allergic to wheat,
and milk and eggs
so the addition of butter and sour cream ruins it
No. #teamgluten
Why do you need this gluten free-pie crust?
Because you're a whiny little snowflake.
I've got both books and they're really fantastic. Highly recommended!
huh interesting