Traditional Flakey Pie Crust

The flakiness comes from two primary ingredients- Water and Butter. Just like these 2 ingredients make the flakiness in traditional baking, they also do in gluten free baking.  For best results butter needs to be soft, room temperature by resting outside of the refrigerator vs microwaving.  If the butter melts, then the water and fat components will combine and you will end up with a hard heavy crust instead of a light and flakey one.  Which brings us to the next important bit of information.  When adding the butter, it is important that you handle the dough just enough to make the fat consistent through out. You don't want the butter fully incorporated as the water is. If the butter melts or is over incorporated, the possibility  of flakiness is gone.

Flakey Pie Crust

1/2 cup Tapioca Starch

1/2 cup Rice Flour

1/3 cup Sorghum or Coconut Flour

1/4 TSP Xanthan Gum

1 TSP Salt

2 TBSP Sugar

*  *  *  *

1/2 cup Butter, room temp

5 TBSP Cold Water 
*  *  *  *

1 Egg White

1) Grease 9" pyrex pie pan, then place all dry ingredients of list 1 in a bowl and mix them together well.

2) Take cold water mix it into the dry ingredients by pressing into the mix with a fork.  When the mix resembles sand, stop.

3) Drop butter into the mixture by nickle-quarter sized clumps.  Take a pastry dough mixer and cut into the dough until there no longer seems to be any of the water/sandy looking mix left.  You DONT want it to be brought together in a ball.  Might take 1-2 mins.

4) Lay out a sheet of saran wrap or two if one is not wide enough-  and dump the contents of the bowl on it.  With out pressing, spread it to about an 8" circle- cover it in another saran wrap, and gently roll to 11" circle.  If the dough splits, push it together.  The dough is forgiving and will go back together, just be sure to roll only once.

5) Remove top saran wrap and using the bottom saran wrap pick up the circle and lay it over your greased pie pan. Gently press into the pan.  If pieces brake off in transfer, just press back together-  no big deal. Form edge of crust as desired.
6) Bake the crust at 400 for 10 minutes then let it cool fully. 

7) Once the crust is fully cooled, using your fingers or back of a spoon, spread the final egg white over the whole crust and bake again at 400 for 6 minutes. 

8) Use this with any pie filling taking about 15-20 minutes off the baking time, or covering the pie with a tin foil tent for the entire baking time.

For a 2 crust pie follow the same instructions with these amounts:

3/4 cup Tapioca Starch

3/4 cup Rice Flour

1/2 cup Sorghum Flour

1 1/2 TSP Xanthan Gum

1 1/2 TSP Salt

3 TBSP Sugar

*  *  *  *

2/3 cup Cold Butter

1/2 cup (+/- ) Cold Water
*  *  *  *

2 Egg Whites

Follow baking instructions for bottom crust above, then follow baking instructions for pie recipe you are making being sure to coat the top crust with eggwhite.