Heard Of No Fail Pastry? How Bout Always Fail .

[jendall]

Does anyone have any luck making good gluten free pastry? I have tried different ones and the sucker seems to always be too moist and when I add more rice flour then it cracks. Any suggestions?

Jen

[kejohe]

Here is one from Bette Hagman's dessert book, I made a couple of minute changes but it works extremely well:

Dream Pastry

1/2 C tapioca flour

1/2 C cornstarch

1/4 C potato starch

1 C sweet rice flour

1 tsp xanthan gum

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 C butter (original recipe calls for margarine, but it has too high a water content and can cause a wet dough so butter is better)

1/2 C butter flavor crisco

1 egg

1 T vinegar

3 - 6 Tbs ice water

rice flour, for rolling

Combine all dry ingredients, cut in butter and shortening until mixture resembles large peas. Beat the egg, vinegar and 2 Tbs ice water with a fork. Add egg mixture to flour mixture, using fork to incorporate just until moistened. Add additional water as needed until mixture becomes a crumbly but not dry mass and holds together when pressed into your fist.

Gather dough into a ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least one hour.

When ready to use, seperate mixture into two portions, and roll out into rounds about 1/4 inch, press into a pie tin and bake as directed for your filling.

I won't lie to you and say that it's not difficult to work with, it tends to be very crumbly before it's baked, but it comes together as the butter melts and it is nicely tender and flakey. Try to realize too, that even when using wheat flour a good pie crust tends to be crumbly before baking, it means that it has not been overkneaded and will be tender to the bite. We are somewhat lucky with the gluten-free pastries and baked goods, because it's difficult to over work the dough. But with pastry, you really want to see chunks of butter in the rolled out dough, they are what turn into steam which creates the characteristic flakey pockets we are looking for in a good pastry.

I hope that this information helps a little. Good Luck,

Kathleen

[janet]

I agree with Kathleen. I've had great success with this recipe but it is really important to chill the dough. The other thing is I roll it out on cling wrap and then for the bottom crust I put the pie plate upside down over the dough then flip the cling wrap, dough and pie plate over. For the top crust I lift the dough using the cling wrap and place it on top of the pie with a rolling motion. I don't know if I'm explaining that well but if you experiment you should be able to figure it out. Chilling and cling wrap made all the difference to my success rate.

Janet