Here we’re using some of my favorite OXO kitchen tools to make individual gluten-free strawberry balsamic & thyme galettes.
It’s highly likely that most of us have had (or are) a dinner guest with a gluten-allergy, am I right? Planning gluten-free desserts can be a little tricky, especially if you love baking. Are you new to gluten-free baking and/or intimidated to try it? I’ve made a list of tips to making deliciously flakey and flavorful gluten-free pie crusts using OXO’s kitchen tools.
Tips for gluten-free crust
1. Weigh your dry ingredients: There is a lot of variation from brand to brand in the coarseness of the flour. For example, the differences in weight of a cup measurement of two brands of sweet rice flour can vary by almost double sometimes. That’s why weighing with a kitchen scale(Opens in a new window) is especially important, as it lets you be precise and consistent with your baking. The kitchen scale is one of the most used items in my kitchen.
2. Substitutions: If you don’t want to buy so many flours, you can also replace all the flours with an all-purpose gluten-free flour blend by weight (If your blend has xanthan gum, remove it from the recipe, but if not, keep it in!). This is where using a scale is very Likewise, if you’re not gluten-free, you can replace all the flour ingredients (including the xanthan gum) with the equivalent in weight of all purpose white flour.
3. Keep butter very cold: Keeping the butter cold and not over-working the dough by instead just working the butter into the flour leaving lots of large chunks remaining will be what helps create the flakiness of the crust.
4. Roll out with plenty of flour and a multi-purpose scraper: Gluten-free dough tends to be more sticky than regular pie dough. Make sure you constantly dust the surface with flour (in this case, millet flour) while using the multi-purpose scrapper(Opens in a new window) to help lift the dough from your work surface to flip it as you go! The dough roller bag(Opens in a new window) saves you time and is good for the planet by reducing the need for parchment paper while rolling out the pie dough.
5. Brush with egg: Use a pastry brush(Opens in a new window) to gently brush the exposed crust with the whisked egg to turn it extra golden brown.
These are just a few tips, but my hope is that once you dive into the world of gluten-free flours, you’ll find that you love the flavor and texture of gluten-free crust even better than traditional pie crust. (And for those of you just getting started these four flours are my most-used flours – I consider them my “essentials”!).
Here, I’ve filled the pie dough rounds with piles of balsamic strawberries with fresh thyme to give the galettes extra twist to create a sweet dessert with sour tangy notes and a fresh herbal undertone.
Head over to Snixy Kitchen(Opens in a new window) to see more pictures of these gluten-free strawberry balsamic & thyme galettes and get the recipe!