Calling All Gluten-Free Pie Crust Recipes – Gratefulfoodie (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.

Certified Gluten Free 9" Pie Shells

For Unfilled Pie Crust: Let thaw at room temperature for 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 375°F. Remove protective sheet from shells before preparing, prick pie shell sides and bottom with a fork. Bake unfilled for 8-10 minutes.

It should be flaky, delicate, and buttery, like a normal, gluten-full pie crust! We tasted five different ready-made gluten free pie crusts and were actually impressed with three. In fact, these three gluten free pie crusts were so good that I'm now contemplating making a gluten free pie this holiday season.

Gluten-free flours often contain fine starches, so they absorb more liquid than conventional flour. To address this, gluten-free recipes usually call for more liquid and produce looser batters. They may also call for a larger quantity of leavening, like baking powder, to help add volume and lighten the texture.

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.

Dry Sweetener

Honestly, the taste of gluten-free flour is what turns most people off this way of eating, but luckily there are various sweeteners that can greatly improve the situation. We usually use coconut sugar, but you don't have to, any kind of sweetener will work just fine.

Eggs are natural leaveners that help boost the rise and volume of bread. Eggs also add moisture, flavor, and protein to gluten-free bread recipes. If you select a gluten-free bread recipe that includes eggs, you have a better chance that the resulting bread will have good color, more volume, and softer texture.

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.

While gluten-free pastry is more delicate to handle, the most frequent reason for cracking is that there is insuffi cient moisture in the pastry. When making shortcrust pastry you mix the fat into the flour until it has the appearance of breadcrumbs, then add the liquid to bring together the dough.

Does gluten-free crust take longer to cook? ›

Bake gluten free pizza for longer than you would bake a regular pizza of the same size. For the pizza in the video above, the bake time is about 13 minutes on a hot baking stone. (A dough with gluten would be about 8 minutes.)

Non-chilled crust is fairly crumbly and less smooth, which makes it harder to roll out and means it may not look as polished. It will brown more quickly and the final product will likely be tougher, heavier, and more doughy – none of those in a bad way. It will likely have a more intense, butter flavor.

I used two Trader Joe's gluten-free pie crusts for the bottom and to make a beautiful lattice design on top!

Gluten Free Classic Pie Crust - Pillsbury Baking.

The pie dough isn't given enough time to relax and chill

The pie crust could have a firm or tough texture if you bake your pie before resting your dough. Giving your dough time to rest will allow all the ingredients to chill, help the moisture distribute more evenly throughout the dough, and make it easier to roll out.

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).