Pumpkin pie with rice flour crust

[Jenise]

The market I stopped at in Canada yesterday is very crunchy, so there's a whole section of bakery goods devoted to non-wheat-gluten flours. Maria Samms' recent post had made me wonder what I would do if a member of my household suddenly had to do without, so I impulsively bought this little pie to try a rice flour crust.

Not thrilled by it. A tiny two-bite sliver gave my mouth feeling like I'd just eaten a spoonful of Crisco . I couldn't believe it--just two bites. Is this just bad in-store baking, or does it take that kind of fat to hold rice flour together? It was a bit super-fine powdery instead of flakey, but otherwise fine.

Rice flour has no gluten. I suspect the pastry chef knew that, but did not know that rice flour would not turn out an acceptable crust. This sounds like a disaster that should have been foreseen by any chef with a halfway decent understanding of food chemistry.

I use rice flour sometimes when cooking for our seliac-plagued friend, but I think it is a poor substitute for wheat flour. As a thickening agent it gets gluey, and makes everything you add it to a little sweeter.
Never tried making a pie crust with it, but I would tend to think that what you experienced would be the result. Blech.

Hey Jenise...you are a brave woman!

I will tell you it's really tough making those kind of substitutions when it comes to baking. It really doesn't taste the same. My son eats a bread made from rice flour called "Bread for Life". It doesn't taste bad, but it definitely doesn't taste like bread...more like a muffin.

I have had more luck with rice pasta...our supermarket carries a brand that you would never know had no wheat in it...it's 100% brown rice pasta and is just delicious.

Since my son doesn't have celiacs, he can actually eat all other grains but wheat (and spelt). Oat or barley flour are better in baking than rice. I found that a combination of oat and rice flour make a decent AP flour mix for baking (but it still doesn't taste like a wheat flour based cake).

Unfortunately if you have celiacs though, you are really limited because you can't have gluten. My goes out to all the sufferers because it's a life long thing and I think it's really toughed to bake with rice flour.

On a related note...we just celebrated my son's 2nd birthday...I made a bunch of wheat-free, egg-free, dairy-free, and nut-free cakes, cookies, rice krispie treats and a blueberry crumble. Everything came out decent (the blueberry crumble was really good) and the kids thought the cake and cupcakes were wonderful.

Here some pics...

His cake...it was a racecar themed party:


Cupcakes decorated with wheels and rice krispie treats shaped like cars:


Baking is NOT my forte...and not being to use standard ingredients and recipes is really challenging. There is a bakery in NYC called "Baby Cakes" and they have hypoallergenic baked goods that I think taste as good as they can.

Thanks for letting me share my pics!

Thanks for posting your photos, Maria. It reminds me so much of when my kids were little and I always made their birthday cakes.