Foolproof Gluten Free Shortcrust Pastry

Especially for SooB and bri (cos I've spent so long trawling the net for GF recipes of one sort or another that I'm more than happy to share when I manage something myself!). Of course flour is fickle, so the amounts should really be treated as approximate. It's all by feel really. Which is useful. Sunday was the first time I actually tried weighing stuff....

Does anyone say 'the net' anymore?

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Righto, this makes a fairly small amount, but I presume scales up (I've not done so yet...). It makes four small size pork pies (I've done pies twice, and sausage rolls once, as well as adding sugar for some tart cases, just needs a 'little' extra water).

Mix 115g GF plain flour with a large pinch of GF baking powder, and around half a teaspoon of xantham gum, and salt to taste. Cube 55g of butter, and rub it into the flour mix till you get a breadcrumby texture. It doesn't have to be too fine. Add an egg and mix in.

Add about 50ml of water. You should get something that looks like really awful scrambled eggs when you mix that in.

Then add another 60g of flour, mixing this in should give you a nice soft dough. A 'little' sticky, but not too bad. Wrap it in cling film and bung in the fridge for at least half an hour.

It should come out again still soft, but a bit stronger. The important thing here is to roll it out between sheets of clingfilm, and making sure that the clingfilm is floured. Rolled out to half a centimetre, or a bit thinner, it should lift off and, as long as you're careful, fit into a case without cracking.

Cooks in about 30 minutes at gas 6, nice and short, not tough. The filling in the last pies I made was a bit wetter, so I popped them out the tray and gave them an extra 5 minutes upside down which worked fine (and obviously on the sweet tart it's blind baked first).

If you try it I'd be really interested to know if it works for you as well. I was planning on sending it to some GF blog or something, but would be good to have some other guinea pigs ;)

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On 'the net', when I started uni in 1994 it was all still really new. There was a new .net magazine that I really liked, with interesting sites to visit, but also email addresses to try. It was new enough that there was a chance people would respond because they weren't inundated. I'd completely forgotten till tonight that the best response I got was from the now sadly departed Terry Pratchett, who I'm sure included a little bit of DEATH speak in it. If only I still had that...

Hours in the garden today, the list gradually shrinking. New plan with the rat issue before seeking some professional, more terminal, action.