She can make a cherry pie, gluten-free

We found sour pie cherries at the Traverse City Farmer's Market, so I brought a quart home to make a pie.

The pie crust is best if you make it 4-24 hours before, chill it in the fridge, and let it rest at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before rolling.  But it also worked just fine with a 45 minute chill before rolling.  I think if it had been colder, I might have been able to do a better lattice top, but it was late, and I was tired and gave up easily. Cutting the dough recipe in half and making a crumb topping might work better.

I pitted the cherries while they were cold from the refrigerator, stirred in the sugar, cornstarch, and flavorings and then let it come to room temp, stirring occasionally.  The sugar helped break up the lumps in the cornstarch and bring out the juice from the cherries.


Pie Dough
420 grams 40/ 60 All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend
3/4 t salt
8 T salted butter, cold, cut into 1 T chunks
8 T vegetable shortening, cold, cut into 1 T chunk
Ice water

Filling
4 ~ 4 1/2 c. sour cherries, pitted
3/4 ~ 1 c. sugar
1 T corn starch
a drop of vanilla (< 1/8 tsp)
a drop of almond flavoring (< 1/8 tsp)

Place the flour and salt in a food processor with a metal blade, and pulse until the flour is fluffed up.  Drop the butter and shortening over the flour, spacing out the chunks so they touch as little as possible.  Pulse 10 - 14 times, until the butter is cut in, leaving some larger pieces.  Drizzle the ice water into the chute of the food processor, pulsing until a ball of dough comes together. I make my GF pie dough slightly wetter than a wheat pastry, without gluten you can't make it tough, and it helps soften the grittiness of the flours (especially if you leave it to rest in the refrigerator overnight).

Pit the cherries.  Stir in the sugar, cornstarch, vanilla and almond flavoring.  If the cherries are cold, allow the mixture to come to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Divide the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap, pat each half into a thick disk, wrap tightly and chill in the refrigerator at least 45 minutes.

Remove one disk from the fridge.  (If it's been refrigerated more than 2 hours, give it 15 minutes to warm up before rolling.)  Unwrap the disk, place it between 2 sheets of parchment paper, and roll it out.  Remove the top parchment paper, and use the bottom sheet to help support the pastry as you transfer it into a glass pie plate.  Tears, breaks, etc can easily be pressed back together.  If you don't have enough dough to make a good edge on one side, trim off a piece from somewhere else and squish it together.  Gluten-free pastry is more like play dough than wheat pastry, and can be treated as such.

Pour the room temperature cherry filling into the pastry.

Roll out the top crust, cut it into strips, and attempt a lattice top.... or just make half batch of pastry and find a crumb topping recipe, substituting your GF blend for the wheat flour.

Line a rimmed cookie sheet with aluminum foil, and place the pie pan in the center.  Bake at 350 F until the filling is bubbling and the pastry is brown and crisp.  Mine took 45 minutes with the convection fan running.  The pastry looks very brown because of the teff flour in my all-purpose blend.