Gluten Free Pastry Crust

Gluten Free Pastry Crust

Here's a quick and delish recipe for a gluten free crust. This can also be made with wheat flour (I will include that version below also). The crust has a nice crunchy with rich butter flavor. It will work fantastic for lemon meringue pie, key lime pie, or even as a lovely layered pastry base or dipped and ate like cookie! I made a lime pie with sweetened cream cheese dollops, decorated with white chocolate garnish, and crust cookie.


Ingredients:
Makes one single crust (4 mini pies, multiple cookies)
1 Cup of Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 Flour (or not gf, use all purpose)
1 Stick of cold butter (salted or unsalted)
1/3 Tsp salt (1/2 tsp if you use unsalted butter)
7 Tbsps iced or very cold water

Directions:
1) Blend the flour and salt together in a medium bowl. Add the butter. Using a pastry cutter or forks, cut the butter into the flour. You can also use a food processor to blend them together. You want it to start looking like bread crumbs, sort of crumbly.

2) Once this is done and your arm has had a good work out... Add 1 tbsp of cold water at a time to the mix, stirring. You want it to start coming together. Once it's at the point where you think you can roll it into a ball- then it's good! It may likely be a lot less water for regular flour, and more for gf.

3)  Roll your dough into a ball. At this point you'll want to refrigerate it to make it easier to work with. If you don't have time, it's not the end of the world- but it will be trickier to roll out, and maybe not be as nice of a crust. Let it get cool for about 30-60 minutes. Pull out of the fridge and let rest while you prepare your work surface.

4) Turn oven on to 425 degrees. You can either flour your counter top or use waxed paper or plastic wrap (the paper or plastic is highly recommended for gluten free). Sprinkle your surface or your paper/wrap with flour. Roll the dough out to about 1/4-1/8 inch (you will sandwich it between two layers of wrap and roll over the wrap if using that method). Carefully lift your rolled dough, and put it into your pie plate (8 or 9" pan will work fine). If you are using this as a cut out crust, just roll it flat and use your cutter. If you are using the plastic/paper, peel one layer off- gently flip over your dough onto the pie dish- and start to peel back the last layer of plastic/paper. If your crust starts to crumble apart or rip and stick to the plastic- don't sweat it. Just peel it off the best you can, and then smoosh it together into your pie pan- trying to make it smooth again. Fill in holes as needed with the dough, and remove the excess so you have a neat looking pie crust.

Hint: if you have extra dough, roll it out and use a round cutter. Place on a baking sheet and put in oven with your pie crust- to make lovely dipped cookie/crackers like I did! They were scrumptious dipped in melted white chocolate and allowed to cool. I placed them in my lime pie as an edible decoration!

5) Once you've got your dough to how you want it, you'll need to blind bake it if it doesn't have goodies baking in it. This means you'll need to put down foil or parchment paper into the shell where you'd normally add your filler (like apple pie filling, etc).  Then you want to put in baking beads or if you don't have those fancy things- you can use dried beans. These act like filling by helping your shell keeps it's shape. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until it's starting to look firm. Then pull out that filler and let it bake more- until it has a nice golden color. They will get too dark quickly, so keep a close eye on it!

6) Let cool. Add your fave filler!! Whether you're making a lovely cream pie, a meringue, chocolate, etc... You will appreciate this easy gf recipe! Give those white chocolate dipped cookies a try out of of your extra dough. I'm still thinking about them.... buttery, sweet, creamy... Yum.