Today I wanted to try again to make a pie. It’s not hard to make a pie when you can eat wheat—all you have to do is go to the store, buy a frozen pie crust, put in the filling, and bake. Viola! It’s a pie. Yum.
Not so when you can’t eat gluten. You have to try recipe after recipe, have them turn out crappy, and eat them anyway because the ingredients are so expensive you can’t afford to waste them.
So, after many pieless months, I tried again today. This pie turned out pretty good. The crust was flaky and brown, but it was a little too flaky. It fell apart. It tasted good, though. Next time I will use less Crisco, maybe ¼ cup, and roll it out thicker. Also, even though the filling was very tasty, I think it needed more tapioca starch, maybe another tablespoon or so.
Here is the recipe, feel free to tweak it, maybe it will work better for you if you do:
½ cup buckwheat flour
½ cup white rice flour
½ cup corn starch
½ cup tapioca starch
3 Tbls potato flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp xanthan gum
½ cup Crisco
¼ cup butter
Mix all the dry ingredients well in a bowl. Cut the Crisco and butter into little diced pieces. Using a pastry blender or your fingers, mix in the Crisco and butter until it resembles small peas. Add cold water, a little at a time, until the dough sticks together to form a ball. Divided the dough into tow pieces, one of them abut two thirds of the dough and the other one third of the dough. Shape into balls, and put in the freezer for 20 minutes.
Take the dough out of the freezer. Work the large ball into a flattened circle. Place the circle of dough onto some plastic wrap. Roll out to about ¼ inch thick, enough to fit into an 8 inch pie pan and overlap the sides. Carefully place the pie crust into the pie pan, and remove the plastic wrap. Push the dough to fit the pan, then trim off the excess from the sides. Pour in the filling.
Prepare the top crust the same way as the bottom. Place on top of the pie, trim off the excess. Use your fingers or a fork to press the two crusts edges together. Cut two or three slits in the top crust. Place on a cookie sheet. Bake in a 400 degree oven for one hour.
And, here is the filling recipe I used:
Apple Berry Pie:
5 apples, peeled and sliced
1 pear, peeled and sliced
½ cup fresh raspberries, washed
1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled, washed and cut in half
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
juice of ½ lime
¼ cup butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 Tbls tapioca starch
Place all ingredients in a large saucepan with a lid. Cook on medium heat for 25 minutes. Stir often to keep from burning or sticking to the pan.
The verdict: This is the best tasting pie I have made since I started eating gluten free. I happened to have some whipped cream in a can, so we had some of that on top. MMMMMMM, MMMMMM.
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