The Gluten-Free Homemaker

“That’s the ultimate recipe!”  Those were the words of my son when he realized I was using this recipe to make several delicious foods.  I’ll show you one of them here, but more ideas will be coming.  Here’s a teaser:

 
This is not a typical pastry dough.  For one, it’s gluten free, and you have to accept the fact that gluten-free pastry doesn’t act like gluten filled pastry.  You can’t produce (at least not that I know of) a pastry dough that is both flaky and flexible.  My gluten-free pie crust works well as a bottom crust for pie, but not as a top crust.  It would fall apart.

This recipe is not flaky like the pie crust recipe.  It uses melted butter rather than chunks of cold butter typically used in pastry dough.  However, it is smooth, flexible and pretty easy to work with.  It’s really quite fun to have a ball of gluten-free dough that you can press, squeeze, roll, cut, fill, and fold.  Give it a try and get creative.

I originally made this recipe using 8 tablespoons of butter.  I was able to cut it back to 6 tablespoons and have it turn out well, but it does turn out a little more dry.  Depending on what you’re making you can use either amount and adjust the amount of milk.

Gluten-Free Workable Pastry Dough

• 3/4 c. brown rice flour
• 3/4 c. millet flour
• 1/4 c. sweet rice flour
• 1/4 c. potato starch
• 1 Tb. xanthan gum
• 2 tsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. unflavored gelatin
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 large egg
• 6 Tb. butter (or 8), melted (or 8Tb. Spectrum organic shortening)
• 1/4 c. + 1 – 2 Tb. milk or milk substitute (or 1/4 c. only if using 8 Tb. butter/shortening)

Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Using a fork, beat together the milk and egg.  Add the milk mixture and melted butter to the dry ingredients and stir with a fork.  It will look crumbly, but everything should be wet.  If needed, add a little more milk.



Now use your hands to form the dough into a ball and work it a little until it is smooth like this:



The dough is now ready to be rolled out or can be wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in the refrigerator.  Roll the dough out on a silicone mat, pastry mat or piece of parchment paper.  Use a piece of plastic wrap on top of the dough to keep it smooth.



Experiment with thickness.  Rolling it very thin makes it more likely to break when folding or transferring.  About 1/16 – 1/8 of an inch works well.  The things I've made with this have been baked at 350 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes.

I promised to show you one way I used this dough.  It won’t thrill many of you, but if you have kids, they’ll like it. 

Pigs in a Blanket
I made these as a snack the other day when my son had a friend over.  On his way out, the boy grabbed another one and told his mom he loved them!  She said she’d have to get the recipe.  They’re not gluten-free eaters.


I used Hebrew National beef franks and cut them into halves or thirds.  I then cut the dough into rectangular strips and rolled up the hot dog pieces like this:



Place them on a baking tray and bake at 350 degrees about 15 minutes. Time depends on the thickness of the dough.



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Labels: appetizer and snack recipes, dessert recipes, pies/pastry