Gluten-Free Pie Crust, Take 1

The Cherry Hand Pies were so great, I wanted to try them again, this time with fresh peaches (really, not much beats a peach pie in my book). I also wanted to try and make them gluten-free, because my fabulous mother-in-law has a gluten intolerance, and it hardly seems fair that she can't eat things like cherry hand pies!

I got a recipe for a gluten-free pie crust from the blog of a friend of a friend--I've been tracking Johnna's  various blogs (about food!) for several years, since my friend Ginger introduced us at a reading by author Gretchen Rubin of one of my favorite books, The Happiness Project. (Yes, that was a long, drawn-out path to how I found the recipe for a gluten-free pie crust--but you really should check out Johnna's blogs AND The Happiness Project, whether you're gluten-free or gluten-full, or happy with your life in its current state or not.)

Johnna's recipe required me to head to Whole Foods in search of some things I hadn't ever bought before, like guar gum, potato starch, and tapioca starch. Thankfully, the folks at Whole Foods are lovely and helpful. Turns out, guar gum isn't gummy at all, but rather a powdered substance, and they didn't have guar gum, so I bought xantham gum (equally NOT gummy). Apparently it helps make the dough elastic, but I don't really know what it IS. I bought some. And used it.

I used regular butter (because I had it) after making sure that the brand I was using was in fact completely gluten-free (apparently some butter could have butter flavoring in it that one can't be assured is actually gluten-free, so you have to be careful).

So the dough seemed very similar to regular pie-crust dough, but slightly softer. This may mean I should have used less flour or more flour or less water or more water, or let it chill longer, or something...but I rolled with it. When I put my hand pies together, they were VERY delicate, and the dough wanted to fall apart quickly, but I still thought things were going okay.

Then. I dropped the first pie into the heated frying oil. Bad news. The dough pretty much disintegrated in the pan and wouldn't get brown at all, and turned to mush. I fished out all the dough and the peaches and took a bite anyway--it tasted pretty good, but it looked awful. I was so upset! No pictures were taken to include with this post.

Lesson learned: gluten-free pie crust is not good for frying, at least in this configuration. I have a lot to learn about gluten-free cooking...fortunately, I only made a few disastrous pies and saved much of the filling and the crust. Stay tuned for the second take with this recipe!