Very Best Gluten Free Pie Crust

Just as an experiment I used this GF flour mix to make a pie crust and it came out amazingly good--like it reminded me of a Crisco flaky crust for a fruit pie from when I was a kid. As a person who eats GF, not because they like it, but for their health, this was a revelation!

1 cup + 2 T set aside of Bob's Red Mill Biscuit and Baking Mix

1 stick butter unsalted

pinch of salt

1 t apple cider vinegar

1/3 C chilled water

half a beaten egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and get out a glass or ceramic pie plate

1. Put baking mix, salt, and stick of butter in a medium mixing bowl. Chop the butter up with a pastry cutter or two knives that you're using to slice all the butter into smaller and smaller pieces. Once the butter pieces are down to smaller chunks, start mixing the butter through with your hands, making the butter globs about the size of peas surrounded by the floury mix--don't keep pressing your fingers on the bare butter (it will get too soft). Keep rolling the little butter bits through your fingers (as if you are actually trying to get dough off your fingers by rubbing your thumb on the rest of your fingers), until the mix looks like coarse meal and none of the butter bits are bigger than say a pea.

2. Stir this mix up with a fork while pouring in the vinegar, mix it up, then add the half an egg, mix it up. Take the chilled water and pour a little bit of it in streams over the flour mixture, stirring after maybe every teaspoon or so, keeping the mealy texture but getting things damp. If the dough is clumping partly together, stop adding water and see if you can get it to be mostly a clump with some crumbs: if you can, you're really finished with the water, even if the dough seems too crumby to you.

3. Dump all this dough into the pie plate. No need to grease. Spread it out as much as you can and if it's sticking to you (too much water) sprinkle a little of that extra 2 T of biscuit and baking mix on top so you can shape it to the pan. There is no rolling out here. That's just the path of sadness. Make sure the dough goes up the sides of the pan as much as you can. Use the heel of your palm to smoosh the dough from the center to the edge, then turn the plate and smoosh the dough from the center to the edge. You get the idea.

4. Bake for seven minutes. If you do the foil thing, or the foil and bean thing, cool, but I do not.

5. After the seven minutes at 350 degrees F, put the par-cooked crust on a rack to cool while you make your filling.

6. This crust lasts pretty well through a baking time until about 40-45 minutes and then you probably need to make a little collar of foil to put around the pie to keep the showing crust from burning.

ENJOY! I haven't made a double crusted pie with this (like a lattice topped pie or an apple pie). It could work, but you'd have to be patient.