My First Gluten-Free Apple Pie!

If you’ve read this blog before, you know that I’ve made gluten-free pies before.  To do so I have used a variety of things to form a crust.  At times I have used ground nuts for the crust; other times I have used crushed cookies.  What I hadn’t yet tried was making a gluten-free pastry crust.

At the gluten-free cooking class that I taught at the Ashland Food Coop one of the attendees indicated that making pie crust was something he was hoping to learn how to do.  Unfortunately I could not incorporate that lesson into my class, but I was inspired to learn how to do it so that I could demonstrate it at a later date.

Today when I began preparation for this pie I searched for a recipe for pastry in one of my gluten-free cookbooks.  Several of the recipes called for sorghum flour, but I didn’t have any of that at home so I turned to the internet.  In the past I’ve found some great recipes on Simply Gluten-Free  and that is where I began my search.  After quickly scanning the available recipes I found this heading: Perfect Gluten-Free Pie Crust and I knew I was on my way.

What is great about this recipe is that it is not much different from making an ordinary pie crust and the author includes a number of helpful tips.  My regular gluten-free flour blend* worked like a charm and I recommend following  the suggestion to roll out the crust between sheets of parchment paper.  My crust did not make it into the pie plate in one piece, but it was easy to press back together… and crimping the edge of the crust was almost a breeze!

For the filling I chose organic Granny Smith apples, brown sugar and cinnamon with about a tablespoon of cornstarch mixed in.  As for the topping, I took the remaining gluten-free flour and added a half cup of butter, a half cup of brown sugar, one half cup of gluten-free rolled oats, and a half teaspoon of salt and mixed it together until it was crumbly.   Then it was simply a matter of putting the apple filling in the crust and sprinkling the crumble over the top.

Then it was just a matter of waiting for it to bake!  One hour later, the finished pie was removed from t he oven!

Gluten-Free Apple Pie

After I allowed it to cool for a few minutes, I carried it over to Deb, my next-door neighbor.  Deb, as you may recall has been gluten-free for a while and she has been a wonderful source of inspiration for me on my gluten-free baking and cooking  journey.  Right now Deb’s sister Jane is visiting and I thought this pie would be a nice treat for them to celebrate their time together.

Deb broke a tiny piece of the crust off immediately and told me that it was good… and that was all I needed to hear.   This recipe is definitely a keeper!  Please give it a try… and if you do, let me know how it worked for you.

“You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  Wayne Gretzky

*To make gluten-free all purpose flour combine 2 cups of brown rice flour, 2/3 cup of potato starch, 1/3 cup of tapioca flour and 1.5 teaspoons of xanthan gum in a mixing bowl.  Whisk well so that all ingredients are evenly distributed.

Tags: Ashland Food Coop, Deb and Jane, dessert, Perfect Gluten-Free Pie Crust, Simply Gluten Free