Gluten Free Pie Crust Tips - Eating Gluten Free (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.

Any good pie crust recipe is about controlling that gluten development. “The fat coats the proteins and prevents gluten formation,” Sharma says of Parks's technique of using a higher ratio of butter and squashing it into large pieces (instead of pea-size ones).

Resting the pie dough is super important as it means that the gluten strands have a chance to relax, and don't contract in the oven, leading to shrinkage.

Hydrate the dough (but not too much)

If it's not holding together at all, you can add more liquid (typically ice water) one tablespoon at a time until the dough holds together when you squeeze it with your hand.

You'll know if your pie dough is too dry if it cracks, crumbles, and doesn't come together easily when rolled into two ball shapes. The culprit here is likely too much flour (see our note above about weighing the flour), but it can be easily corrected.

Vinegar, buttermilk, lemon juice, and vodka all change the interaction of the liquid and gluten in the dough. But the difference between a dough with acid in it and one without (when made with the same technique) is infinitesimal.

The lower water content and minimal manipulation of the dough both help reduce gluten development.

And that's because xanthan gum can be used in two ways: as a thickening and stabilising agent (to thicken sauces and stabilise emulsions) or as a binder in gluten free baking. Now, when you want to use a substitute for its thickening action, cornstarch is definitely a good option.

Many sweet and savory pie recipes require pre-baking or "blind baking" a crust. No one really knows where the term got its name, but "blind" baking a crust means baking it without a filling.

Should I bake the bottom pie crust first? ›

You do not need to pre-bake a pie crust for an apple pie or any baked fruit pie really, but we do freeze the dough to help it stay put. Pre-baking the pie crust is only required when making a custard pie OR when making a fresh fruit pie. you should probably get: Pie weights are super helpful to have for pre-baking.

Gluten-free baked goods often benefit from extra liquid to hydrate the flour blends, eliminate grittiness, and achieve a less dense or dry texture. However, it's very important to drive off this extra moisture during baking, or you'll wind up with a gummy texture. The best way to do this? Longer baking times.

Tips For Gluten-Free Baking. Gluten-free baking is a lot harder than traditional baking because gluten protein is what gives baked goods their structure. Bread without gluten or any gluten substitute will be thick and crumbly when it comes out of the oven.

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.)

While it's possible to include too little liquid in your gluten free bread recipe and end up with dry bread, you'll experience the opposite if you add too much liquid, don't let the dough rise enough before baking, or don't bake the loaf for long enough until it's baked all the way to the bottom.

The additional xanthan gum makes gluten-free dough slightly stretchy and allows it to capture carbon dioxide bubbles during bulk fermentation (the initial rise). Once the dough is deflated and transferred to a bread pan, the xanthan structure breaks down.