This pie crust recipe is a winner for almost any pie. But for this blueberry filling pictured, go here for complete pie instructions. Use these two recipes simultaneously unless you care to make your crust well in advance (that’s totally fine).

Interstitial Cystitis patients, be sure to omit the apple cider vinegar in this recipe and replace with ice water or milk. Don’t worry, I repeat that in the recipe card.

For me personally, every good pie crust begins with me cubing up a bunch of butter all tiny on a sheet of wax paper, rolling that wax paper up into a log, and popping that log in the freezer while sift I measure out my other ingredients.

Below you can see what the dry ingredients look like once I add some, but not all, of the butter (picture 1). Picture 2 (middle pic) is after I finish adding all the butter, pulse to combine to the consistency of coarse crumbs, then drizzle apple cider vinegar (or milk) and ice water over the top, then pulse again to combine. This recipe differs from my cream cheese crust in that we don’t turn out the dough into a big mixing bowl to stir in the binding liquid – we just add it to the processor and turn out once combined. Just like in the cream cheese crust recipe, I turn out the dough into 2 even batches onto 2 sheets of wax paper and go from there (picture 3 below).

Now I start to form my crust discs out of these piles, eventually wrapping each disc up in its own wax paper, stacking on top of the other in a gallon ziplock bag, and resting them in the fridge for at least an hour.

Once I pull the FIRST rested crust out (leave the second one in there while you roll out and fit the first one to the dish), it can take up to 10 minutes to warm up a little and become pliable to roll.

Now, it’s easy enough to pat a bottom crust into a pie plate and trim around the edge. But I like to measure my rolled dough for the top crust before I start doing any sort of real decoration. I knew I wanted to try to make a crescent moon and stars pattern on this blueberry pie crust, so I just popped my pie plate down on the 2nd rolled crust for the top, and traced around lightly with an unclicked pen. Well, okay. It was clicked but out of ink. My own exhibit A betrays me here (below).

  • Here I’ve positioned the pie dish, bottom crust pressed into it, onto the rolled-out top crust to trace a rough shape before decorating.
  • Next I decorate & vent by cutting a few holes to my liking! I’m experimenting trying to make a crescent moon with biscuit cutters today.
  • Now I’ve refrigerated the crust from picture 2 (left) for a few minutes and slid it onto the filled bottom crust from the cutting board.

Below I’ve trimmed the top crust to line up with the bottom crust (easy peasy, just use the edge of the glass like you did for the bottom). Not pictured: I used all the crust trimmings I saved from the top and bottom edges of the crusts to cut out WAY too many stars using 3 sizes of my mini cookie cutters because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do decoration-wise yet besides the moon.

Guess what, haters? All extra stars & scraps were frozen for pie crust cookies later. Delicious. You like buttery shortbread cookies? Haven’t had all-butter pie crust cookies with a little baked-on jam yet? Brother… we are gonna get along.

So, confession time. I spaced out and made a mistake making this blueberry pie. I’m supposed to wait until halfway through baking to pull out the pie, brush with lactose-free milk or cream, and sprinkle with sanding sugar. For some unknown reason, I went ahead and did all of this before I even put it into the oven for the first time. What can I say? Don’t let me get in my zone.

Here’s how I fixed it. I realized what I’d done as the stars began to overbrown from the brushed-on fat & sugar (middle piture below). I tented the whole thing with foil (third picture below). This caused the browning to stop, and the undercooked, still-raw crust underneath to catch up to the overbrowned decorative cutout pieces. I removed the foil at the same the time I always pull off my silicone crust protector – 20 minutes before the pie should be done cooking (according to whatever crust / pie recipe you’re using).

This absolutely saved the crust, enough to crisp it up deliciously all over without burning it anywhere. The whiter-looking crust underneath the stars (below) is still very crispy, tender and flaky. Could it have been more golden-brown all over if I had put the milk and sugar on top at the right time? Probably. Did this accidentally making a really cool-looking contrast with my moon and stars decoration though?? Completely.

Now, you may be wondering as you scroll down – where’s the recipe for this maple blueberry filling? (It’s HERE)

Thanks for visiting!

Gluten Free All-Butter Pie Crust

Gluten Free All-Butter Pie Crust

Completely buttery and flaky; the perfect selection to pair with a delicate fruit you’re making into the true star of the show. My best “old school” classic pie crust.

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Recipe by Brookey
3 from 3 votes
Course: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Difficult for first-time crustmakers
Servings

8

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

2

hours 

Ingredients

  • 3 1/2 cups gluten free baking flour, plus more for dusting your rolling surface

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1/4 cup sugar

  • 3 sticks butter (24 tbsp, or 1 1/2 cups), diced

  • 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (IC-friendly version: Replace with Milk or Ice Water)

  • 1/3 – 1/2 cup ice water

  • Hardware

  • 9-inch pie plate

  • rolling pin or bottle of wine

  • wax paper

  • gallon ziplock bag or saran wrap

Directions

  • In a food processor, pulse together gluten free flour, sugar, salt. Add 1 stick (or 1/3) of your diced butter, pulse until combined. Add the remaining 2/3 of your butter and pulse repeatedly until the mixture resembles an almost cornmealy, coarse crumb texture.
  • Add the 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Gradually drizzle your 1/3 cup of ice water and pulse, adding up to 1/2 cup of ice water – until it looks like my pictures above.
  • Turn dough in 2 even batches onto 2 sheets of wax paper on the counter. Form each of these roughly equal half-batches into a flat, circular disc-like shape like pictured above in this post.
  • Wrap the edges of the wax paper beneath the crust discs around the crust and cover wax paper packages tightly with saran wrap, or toss both discs in a stack into a gallon ziplock bag and put into the refrigerator to rest for at least 1 hour.
  • One at a time, pull out rested crust and unwrap onto a well-dusted surface of gluten free flour.
  • You may need to let this crest rest on the counter for up to 10 minutes. Check the crust disc with your hand to see if it’s warmed up a little and pliable – but you still want it quite cold! Just warm enough to start slowly rolling out with your pin without it tearing too much.
  • Slowly roll out your crust disc, being careful to gently roll in all directions to make as even of a circle shape as you can. Try to get the crust to be about a 12-inch circle, and about 1/8 – 1/4 inch thick. I like a thicker pie crust, so this is also kind of up to preference in this range.
  • Now pull out your second pie crust disc and let it start resting on the counter in the wax paper while you fit your first crust into your pie dish.
  • Roll crust loosely onto rolling pin to get it off the counter, rolling out carefully into a 9-inch glass pie plate. Let the sides of the crust hang over the edges of the pan and press gently into the pan with your fingertips until crust is evenly fitted into the dish and there are no air bubbles underneath.
  • Put pie dish with rolled crust fitted to it into refrigerator while you repeat steps 6-7 with the second dough disc.
  • Leaving the second crust on the counter and taking the pie plate with the first crust out of the fridge, place the pie plate over the rolled out crust on the counter and use an unclicked ballpoint pin or butter knife to gently trace the outline of the outer edge of the pie plate onto the crust. So you’ll be able to tell where to place your upper crust to make it even when you assemble your filling and cover with this crust to bake.
  • Slide a thin cutting board or baking sheet under the crust you’ll use for the top pie crust under it and place both bottom and upper crusts into the fridge until you’re done with your pie filling.
  • If cooking with a cooked pie filling like my blueberry pie recipe, allow this filling to completely cool before pouring into the bottom crust.
  • Cut a few vents or use cookie cutters to make vent shapes into top crust (you really only need a few small vents or shapes, I just go crazy with my cookie cutters in my blueberry pie for fun).
  • Take out bottom crust with filling, cut excess dough from around the edge of the dish with scissors, and brush the remaining edges of the crust with water or milk to seal with the top crust.
  • Slide vented crust onto filled pie, press down onto the edges all around the circle to seal or crimp into desired edge shape (I just pressed down and sealed with brushed moisture for my pictured recipe) and cook in oven according to pie recipe – my blueberry pie recipe is here).