Essential Pie Crust Recipe

Couldn't resist this pic. Pi Pie. Teeheehee.

Finally! I did it! Huzzah! The perfect GF pie crust! It is soooo yummy. Light and flaky, holds together beautifully, gets golden brown, completely easy to work with, and pairs perfectly with sweet or savory. I modified it from this web site's recipe for empanadas: http://daringtothrive.blogspot.com/2008/09/testing-testing-gluten-free-empanadas.html

I didn't have all their ingredients, so I played around with what I did have, and some other recipes I've tried, and after experimenting with it for a few weeks now, I've nailed it down! It does call for multiple flours, which is sort of a pain in the ass, but, the dough is so perfect it really does make it worth it.
You want it, don't you?
Ok. I will share.

1 and 1/2 cups of brown rice flour
1/2 cup of tapioca flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1/4 cup butter, cubed and chilled
1/4 cup of cream cheese cubed and chilled

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 large egg

1/4 cup water

combine dry ingredients.
work in butter cubes and cream cheese with a fork or pastry knife (or your hands, you know) until the texture becomes grainy and fluffy

beat together vinegar and egg. Add to dry ingredients and mix well.

kneed with your hands and slowly add in water until dough forms and sticks together. work into a ball. wrap in wax paper and chill in fridge while you make your pie or empanada filling. (or about 30 minutes)

when you are ready, roll out the dough with a rolling pin. What works best for me is to lay out some wax paper, sprinkle a bit of rice flour on the paper and around your ball of dough. Put another piece of wax paper on top, and roll out. This helps it keep together and also makes it easy to transfer into pie pans.

fill as you wish and fold over, pinching the edges. Bake in a 375 degree oven until edges brown.

Variations:

The first time I made this, I was making sausage empanadas, and I didn't have any apple cider vinegar or cream cheese. So I omitted the vinegar, and replaced the cream cheese with 1/4 cup of original flavored humus. The texture and workability stayed about the same, and the humus added a really nice flavor to the dish, so I recommend this variation if you wanted to make Mexican-flavored dishes, or a curry pot pie or something.

Another variation, if you wanted an extra-flaky, rich pastry dough, is to use 1/2 cup of butter instead of 1/4, which just punches up the decadence a bit. But most days I am trying not to get fat, so I try to keep the butter reasonable.

(But I feel like the day for a pear and ginger pie is coming soon... and then I'm gonna butter that shit up!)

So there you have it! I'm gonna post up the empanada recipes I've made plus a few pies in a bit, I just wanted to have the crust up with its own post, since I'm be referencing back to it quite a bit.