This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
This perfect pie crust is tender and flaky where it counts, rolls out perfectly every time, and you can use it for single or double-crust pie recipes.
With over 1,000 5-star reviews, this in-depth recipe is the one that convinced you that you can have all of your favorite pies back!
“This pie crust is an astonishing achievement. Nicole is able to unlock secrets I didn’t believe possible and I have found a love of baking because of it.”
“I have baked pies most of my life. … I thought those days of having anything with pie crust was over. I use this recipe for pies and chicken pot pies. … Thank you for such a wonderful recipe!”
my take
Nicole's Recipe Notes
- Texture: Easy to roll out and handle, this pie crust bakes up tender, flaky and light, never greasy.
- Taste: Buttery, rich and crisp, with that homemade taste you'd never mistake for store-bought.
- Quick & easy: Make the crust with just a bowl and a spoon in minutes, then chill it to use any time.
- Versatile: Perfect for sweet and savory pies, and it never gets soggy on the bottom. You'll love it for chicken pot pie, quiche, cherry pie, and apple pie!
Recipe ingredients
- Gluten free flour blend: Any high quality, well-balanced all purpose gluten free flour blend with finely ground rice flour should work here. If your blend is starchy, you will probably need to add more water.
- Salt: Adds flavor.
- Baking powder: Helps provide some rise.
- Butter: Cold chunks of butter folded in to the flour create flakiness when baked. Adds rich buttery flavor.
- Sour cream: Adds flavor and tenderness without adding too much moisture.
- Ice water: Helps balance the moisture just enough to bring the dough together without warming the butter. Add only the cold water, not the ice.
How to make a flaky gluten free pie crust
Whisk together an all purpose gluten free flour blend with xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add chopped, cold butter, toss to separate and coat in dry ingredients, and press the butter chunks flat between clean fingers.
Mix in sour cream, to create a shaggy dough. Then mix ice cold water by the teaspoonful into any dry parts until all of the dough clumps.
Press the pie crust into a disk, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes. Dust the chilled dough with flour, and roll into a rough rectangle. Fold the dough in thirds like a business letter, and roll again. Repeat once more, and fold it into a packet.
Roll the dough from the center to the ends into an 11-inch round. Use a rolling pin to transfer the shaped dough to a greased pie pan. Tuck the edges of the dough under, and crimp the sides.
Pierce the bottom of the crust with a fork. Line the crust with paper and fill with pie weights. Partially bake at 375°F for 10 minutes, then remove the paper and weights. Fill the crust and finish baking, or bake for another 10 to 12 minutes, then add a no-bake filling.
Expert tips
Keep the butter pieces large and flat
The common method of working butter into flour until it resembles “pea-sized pieces” tends to make tougher crusts. Large but flat, solid pieces of fat that are evenly distributed throughout the raw dough creates flaky layers like in gluten free puff pastry.
Use a bowl and spoon
Processing the pie crust mixture by hand with a bowl and spoon makes it easy to keep the butter pieces large. A stand mixer or a food processor is more likely to create too-small pieces of butter that tend to melt into the dough, creating a tough, not a tender, crust. If you decide to use a food processor, process the dough as little as possible.
Parbake to avoid a soggy baked pie
If you're making a pie that be filled and then baked, partially baking the crust first keeps the crust crisp, never soggy. Line the raw, shaped and prepared pie crust with parchment paper, fill with dried beans or pie weights, and bake at 375°F for 10 minutes. Remove the parchment and the pie weights, brush with egg white, and bake again.
Blind bake for a no bake filling
If your filling is no-bake, after parbaking, remove the pie weights and bake again for 10 to 12 minutes minutes, or until the pie crust is lightly golden brown all over. Let the crust cool before filling and setting.
Keep ingredients cold
When exposed to the heat of the preheated oven, the cold ingredients, especially the added fat (usually butter, or sometimes lard, solid coconut oil, or shortening), evaporate and push out the surrounding dry ingredients, creating flaky, crispy layers. If your butter starts to melt when you're shaping the crust, chill it again before continuing to shape it. If the butter isn't solid before it goes in the oven, the crust will be stiff and tough.
Don't stretch the crust
Lift the raw, rolled pie crust up and into the bottom and sides of the pie plate rather than attempting to stretch it. That will help keep it from tearing during shaping or shrinking during baking.
Crimp the edges
The easiest way to decorate a pie crust is to crimp the edges. Place the thumb and forefinger of one hand about one inch apart on the edge of the pie crust pointing from the inside out. From the outside in, press the knuckle of the forefinger of your other hand in the center of the other two fingers. Repeat around the perimeter of the crust.
Dairy free
Try replacing the butter in the pie crust with half shortening (Crisco or Spectrum brand is best) and half block-style vegan butter like Miyoko's Creamery brand. Vegan butter melts faster than regular butter, though, so you may have to chill the dough more often as you work.
For the sour cream, try Greek-style (strained and thickened) plain non-dairy yogurt, or non-dairy sour cream. Be sure that your gluten free flour blend is also dairy-free, like Better Batter.
Instead of using nondairy sour cream, you can increase the baking powder to 1/2 teaspoon and begin with 3/8 cup (3 fluid ounces) water, iced. Add more iced water by teaspoon as directed in the recipe.
Extra Flaky Gluten Free Pie Crust Recipe
Equipment
- Rolling Pin
- Pie weights
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups (210 g) all purpose gluten free flour blend, (See Recipe Notes) plus more for sprinkling
- ¾ teaspoon xanthan gum, omit if your blend already contains it (use a heaping 3/4 teaspoon)
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 6 tablespoons (84 g) unsalted butter, roughly chopped and chilled
- ½ cup (120 g) sour cream, full fat, preferably, chilled
- Ice water by the teaspoonful, as necessary
- Egg white, for brushing (optional)
Instructions
Make the pie crust dough
- In a large bowl, place the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt, and whisk to combine well.
- Add the chopped and chilled butter, and toss to coat it in the dry ingredients.
- Flatten each chunk of butter between your thumb and forefinger to make flat shards of butter, coated fully in flour.
- Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients with the butter shards, add the sour cream, and mix to moisten the dry ingredients with the sour cream. The dough should be shaggy and still somewhat crumbly.
- If there are any portions of the dough that are especially dry, try to isolate them in the mixing bowl, drizzle ice water by the teaspoon on only those parts and then mix to moisten them.
- Drizzle in more ice water only as necessary to moisten lightly all of the dry ingredients. Knead the dough together with clean hands until it begins to come together.
- Turn the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, and press into a disk as you close the plastic wrap around the dough. It will still seem rough.
- Place the dough in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 375°F. Grease a 9-inch metal pie plate generously and set aside.
Smooth out the chilled dough
- Once the dough has chilled, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, and sprinkle the top lightly with more flour.
- Roll the dough out into a rough rectangle that is about 1 inch thick, moving the dough frequently and sprinkling it lightly with flour if it begins to stick. Fold the dough over on itself in thirds like you would a business letter.
- Sprinkle the dough again lightly with flour, and roll out the dough once again into a rough rectangle about 1 inch thick. Fold again in thirds.
- Working quickly, sprinkle the dough lightly with flour, and roll out once more into a rough rectangle, for a total of 3 times.
- Fold the dough in thirds again, then fold in the sides to make a square packet of dough. Press the dough together, and try to round the sides into a disk.
- If the dough feels warm at all, or like the butter is melting, cover it with plastic wrap and chill it until the butter is firm again.
Shape the dough in the pie plate
- Roll the dough out into an approximately 11-inch round, about 3/8-inch thick. Roll from the middle to the edges in every direction to help create a round. If the dough splits on the edges, pinch them together.
- Roll the pie crust loosely onto the rolling pin and then unroll it over the prepared pie plate.
- Trim any especially rough edges of the crust with kitchen shears or a sharp knife. Lift up the edges of the pie crust gently to create slack in the crust, and place the crust neatly on the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate.
- Tuck the excess pie crust under itself along the perimeter of the crust, where it overhangs the pie plate. Crimp the edge gently all the way around the crust by pinching the dough at regular intervals with one hand, and creating a crimped impression with the forefinger of the other hand.
- Cover the pie crust with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator to chill until firm, at least 30 minutes (and up to 3 days).
Parbake the crust (See Recipe Notes)
- Remove the pie crust from the refrigerator and unwrap and discard the plastic. Pierce the bottom of the pie crust all over with the tines of a fork.
- Place a sheet of parchment paper on top of the raw crust and fill the crust with pie weights or dried beans. Filling the pie crust will help keep the bottom from expanding and the edges from falling down into the pie dish.
- Place the plate in the center of the preheated oven and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the crust is just beginning to turn very lightly golden brown on some edges.
- Remove the pie weights and parchment. The bottom of the crust should be less shiny but not browned. If it's still shiny, brush the bottom of the crust with the optional egg white, and return the pie crust to the oven and bake for another 2 to 4 minutes.
- Allow the parbaked crust to cool before proceeding with your recipe.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
make ahead/leftovers
Storage instructions
Once parbaked, it's best to use it right away by either blind baking and filling your crust, or filling it with a baked filled.
When it's still raw and unshaped, you can wrap it very securely in plastic and refrigerate it for up to three days. For longer storage, warp twice (once in plastic, then in an air tight zip top bag) and freeze. Defrost overnight in the refrigerator. After refrigerating, it will likely be too hard to roll without cracking, so allow it to sit in the plastic wrap at room temperature for at least 10 minutes to warm up before you attempt to roll it out.
After you've shaped the raw crust, you can wrap it tightly in the pie plate and freeze it for up to 2 months. Unwrap it and parbake it right from the freezer in a 400°F oven, 25°F warmer than usual, since the very cold pie will lower the oven temperature. Continue to bake at 375°F.
FAQs
Yes, you can bake this crust in a glass pie pan, which will allow you to see the bottom of the crust and accurately judge how much it has browned. Baking in glass is similar to baking in porcelain, as both retain heat very well, so watch carefully to ensure you don't burn your crust.
The best method for a flaky pie crust is a bowl and spoon. But if you'd like to use a stand mixer or food processor, use larger pieces of chopped butter and only process briefly to avoid making the butter too small or melting it.
Yes! Just click the [2X] button in the recipe card, or increase the yield from 1 pie crust to 2. Divide the dough in half, and shape each half separately as directed.
This recipe turned out a wonderfully tender pie crust
Excellent pie crust. I make it in my food processor. thank you
This pie crust is an astonishing achievement. Nicole is able to unlock secrets I didn’t believe possible and I have found a love of baking because of it.
Love to hear it, Sam!!