Whenever I start developing a new recipe I start by looking at the basic, essential ingredients in the recipe, so let’s start there too. What makes a pie crust a pie crust, and not a cookie or a cake?
A pie crust has three essential ingredients: flour, fat, and a little bit of water. In some ways it is similar to a cookie, which is made of flour, fat, sugar and sometimes egg. Cookies and pie crust both contain very little water and in a low-water recipe the amount and type of other ingredients becomes much more important. There’s just less room for error.(1)
Flours: What Works for Pie Crusts?
Let’s start off with flour. The chief struggle that I had with developing a really good gluten free pie crust was in choosing the flours to use. I tried everything from my all purpose gluten free flour mix, to a more simple mix of brown rice flour and cornstarch, and then finally ended up with a mix that is mainly cornstarch and tapioca starch with a relatively small amount of brown rice flour.
I don’t love using lots of starch flours in my baking, but it works. After I finalized my recipe I compared it to a few others and found that, for the most part, those recipes also use a good amount of starch. I’ve tried the recipe with a mixture of tapioca starch and cornstarch, and then with only cornstarch. Both seemed to work equally well. Later in this article I will refer to starch flours, and by that I mean any combination of tapioca starch and corn starch.
Fat: Butter, Shortening or Lard?
The second ingredient in a pie crust is fat, and you have a lot of choices as to which fat to use. Butter, shortening, and lard are all traditional options and you can use any one of these, or a combination. When choosing a fat, first of all consider what food allergies/intolerances that you need to work around. There are many allergen friendly options out there, such as Earth Balance Buttery Sticks, Spectrum Shortening, or animal lard that you render at home. As always, be sure to check the labels of the products that you buy and do your due diligence.
The melting point of the fat should be your second consideration when choosing a fat. The fat that you work into the pie crust needs to stay solid until a certain point in the baking process, if you are making a flaky, or partially flaky, crust. Butter and lard began to soften at a lower temperature than shortening. Therefore, if you choose to use butter or lard in your pastry you must be much more careful about keeping the ingredients, bowls, and rolling surfaces chilled as you work on the dough. Commercial shortenings, because they are hydrogenated, are stable at higher temperatures and thus easier to work with for pastries. Since butter and lard are more flavorful, each baker has to decide for himself whether flavor or ease of use wins out.
By the way, if you’re don’t care whether your crust is flaky, then the temperature of the fat becomes much less important. If you’re happy with a non-flaky crust, then the only reason to chill the dough would be if that made the dough more workable.
Water: How Much and How Cold?
Water is the third ingredient in a pie crust amd my personal bugaboo when it comes to making a pie crust. It seems that every pie crust recipe I’ve ever read goes to great lengths to warn you not to use too much water. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has taken that warning to heart and then ruined a pie crust by not using enough water. I was very happy when I read in my copy of Joy of Cooking that it’s better for new pie bakers to err on the side of a bit too much water, rather than to little. After all, the reason that water is bad in traditional recipes is that it activates the gluten in the wheat flour. We don’t have to worry about that so we might as well make sure that our dough is easy to roll out. You don’t want it to be sticky, but it should be easily malleable.
What If I Can’t Use……?
I’ve tried to avoid using common allergens in this recipe, but you may find that you need to make some substitutions anyway. Here are some suggestions for ingredients that may be problematic.
Instead of cornstarch, use tapioca starch (flour) or sweet rice flour
Instead of rice flour, use any mildly-flavored grain or bean flour.
Shortening alternatives: This recipe uses shortening rather than butter, because shortening is much easier to work with than butter and I intended this to be an easy recipe. I tested the recipe with Crisco shortening, but Earth Balance Shortening or Spectrum Shortening may be better options for you. (But do check the labels in case they’ve changed since I did the research for this article) By they way, I found the butter flavored shortening to be too artificially flavored and much preferred the unflavored shortening for this recipe.