Custard Pie (and Gluten Free Crust test): Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #5

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Pies! July 27 - August 9
Make a pie! Meat, fruit, sweet, savory - but make sure it’s documented!

Custard Pie from American Frugal Housewife

To start, you should probably know that pies are my home turf.  I have been asking for a birthday pie as long as I can remember (cakes just don't do it for me).  My family has had an annual pie-extravaganza for almost 30 years, ever since the one Thanksgiving where my mom asked what pie we should have for our family celebration (always a pumpkin and pecan and one more in a regular year)....everyone asked for a different pie and she threw caution to the wind and made everyone's pie request.  We had 8 pies for our 6 family members that year, and going forward we insisted on one pie per person; after all, "it's a tradition!"  Our high water mark was something like 26, because we like to invite people over and they get to order a pie, too.  I took over making all the crusts when I was in college and so I've made hundreds and hundreds of pies over the course of my life.  So pie itself is easy for me.  

But, my husband and girls eat gluten free because of family celiac disease on his side and I've been cooking and baking gluten free for about 11 years.  (If you want to check out some gluten free recipes, I have some great boards on Pinterest, here's just one of them.)  In the States, it is easier to find gluten free food.  Here in Peru, there isn't the same general population problem with eating gluten (though they do have tons of naturally gluten free grains here, like maca and quinoa).  Hence, it's also a little trickier to find things.  So I thought for this challenge, I would make it more of a challenge for myself and see if I could come up with a new GF pie crust recipe.  I made four edible attempts but none of them are so fantastic I would make them again without attempting to improve them.  See the pictures below for more details on where I started and if you make a great GF crust from scratch leave the recipe in the comments!

The Recipe: Custard Pie, The Frugal Housewife, Lydia Child, 1841, (p. 68 in this edition.) 

How Did You Make It: I generally followed the instructions, such as they were.  I used a liter of milk because that's what we had (it was slightly sour, but a quick google search showed that custard is one of the suggested ways to use sour milk!)  I used 6 eggs; if it's good enough for Mrs. Child, it's good enough for me.  I heated my milk with stick cinnamon and some zested lemon peel (I didn't have any lemon on hand and it's been a rough two weeks.  I didn't have time to go to market to get some.)  I used 3/4 cup of white sugar based on a modern recipe amount, a pinch of salt, and 1 tablespoon of nutmeg (again, no time to buy a whole nutmeg and I'm trying to use the spices we have here rather than buy more).  Cooking time is impossible to ascertain because I cooked the tester pies on a baking stone which increases time.  My full pie was baked by itself but when the gas died, that added to baking time.  I did bake the large pie crust for about 10 minutes when the little pies were baking.  (Remember to poke holes in the crust so it doesn't puff up while baking.)  I also chose to whisk the eggs before adding them to the milk, and I strained the milk of the cinnamon sticks and lemon zest.  She didn't say to do that but it seemed like a good idea to me.

The big departure from the script was trying to make a gluten free crust that was relatively easy, from ingredients that are easy enough to find (here in Peru and in the States), and tasted decent.  I made four mini-crusts, plus one large crust from my old standby, Cooqi Flour, the All Purpose Flour Blend.  (I get nothing from them, but I've been using their products for several years and have found this blend to be usable in a 1:1 ratio in regular recipes for cookies and pie crusts and cakes.  I like the all purpose blend better than the cake/pastry blend.)  My family is gluten free due to a family history of celiac disease (I'm not).  So I have about 11 years of experience in cooking gluten free.  I have a lifetime of experience in pie baking.  So, it seemed fitting to make the two go together.  When I'm back home, I have been able to successfully use the Cooqi flour for everything I want to make but the only way I can get it in Peru is to have a visitor bring it down.  So I have been hoarding it.  I did break out a cup for the pie in this challenge since I have about 3.5 pounds and we have about 9 months until we go home.  And I found a great sugar cookie recipe that uses gluten free flours I can find here, which means my need for the GF flour has decreased.

Time to Complete: Oh, I didn't really time this one.  I suppose I spent a few hours putting everything together, mixing 5 different crusts, and doing two baking times.

 
Total Cost: Approximately $4.50-$5  Butter: about 4 soles ($1.43 USD), Milk: 2 soles (71 cents USD), 6 eggs: 3 soles ($1.07 USD), sugar, stick cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, in pantry and negligible cost.  Flours were probably the most money, but I'm really not sure how much, maybe $1-2 USD total for the pantry items.

How Successful Was It?: It tasted good and all the sample crusts were edible and even passable, but I don't think I have achieved a good enough GF crust to end my quest.  I also think it would have tasted better with some cinnamon baked in the custard (rather than just the boiled cinnamon sticks).  I sprinkled a little on the top on later pieces and liked it better that way.  I may have eaten pie for dinner.  It's a tough life but someone has to do it.

How Accurate Is It?: Very accurate.  The gas tank even ran out on the oven, so I got to experience what life might have been like if my fire went out in my wood fired stove or hearth.  It stopped in the middle of baking my large pie, which suffered temperatures ranging from 150 (when I noticed that something was wrong) to 400.  Poor pie.  It did seem to come through everything ok, though.  I did use ground nutmeg instead of a freshly ground whole nutmeg and lemon zest I had in the freezer instead of lemon peels, but even those are pretty close.

Time to Research:  Given that I start with Lydia Child on all of the challenges and she had something that would work, the recipe was maybe 15 minutes as I decided what pie to make.  I spent about an hour trying to figure out my gluten free tester recipes.

What I used for my GF mini-pies.  (If any of these worked great, I would just scale up.  Because this was just a general test, I used measurements instead of weight.  You may know that weight is the most accurate way to replicate results and that different flours have different weights for the same volume.)  I started with my great grandmother's basic pie crust recipe (1 cup flour, 1/2 cup fat, 1/4 cup water) and just used those ratios.

**All of the GF crusts had 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum in addition to the flour ratios below, then I cut in 2 T butter and 1 T or a little less of water.

GF Crust #1:  2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 2 Tablespoons white rice flour

GF Crust #2: 1 1/2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 1 1/2 Tablespoons white rice flour, 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour)

GF Crust #3: 2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour), 1 Tablespoon arrowroot powder (aka arrowroot flour or arrowroot starch)

GF Crust #4: 2 Tablespoons brown rice flour, 2 Tablespoons white rice flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons tapioca starch (aka tapioca flour), 1 1/2 teaspoons corn flour (aka masa)

My opinion on results:  All of the flours worked in terms of being able to be cooked, hold the pie filling, and were edible.  But my standards for GF are great taste, not just edible (I still think any of these were better than the sawdust style GF foods).  GF flours #2-4 worked better when patted into a patty in my hand and pushed into place in the pan.  Not uncommon for GF flour mixes.  There isn't any gluten to give elasticity.

GF Crust #1:  Rolled the best, almost stuck together the whole process of rolling and flipping into the pie pan.  But tasted the worst of the four options (not horrible, but a clear notch down from the others.)

GF Crust #2: Rolled out ok but failed at being able to transfer from rolling mat to the pan.  Good texture, tasted a little sweet and I'm not sure why but it was pleasant.  (I'm guessing the tapioca flour because the first crust didn't taste sweet at all.)  

GF Crust #3: Same rolling comments as #2 but had a smoother texture than #2.  One of the top two of this batch.

GF Crust #4: Same rolling comments as #2 but had a smoother texture than #2 and flakiest texture of all of them.  I wouldn't think the corn flour would help that much, but it really seemed to work.  This may have been the best, certainly one of the top two.  

Heating the milk with lemon zest and stick cinnamon.

Mixing bowls for gluten free flours 1-4

Here's what they looked like with the different flours dumped in the bowls.

Here's how they looked after whisking the flours together.  They were all pretty much the same, except for #4 on the far right had a little yellow cast because of the corn flour.  I think that if you found a GF flour that worked well, you could totally bring it along to a reenactment and no one would be the wiser.

I used room temperature butter as my fat and flour #1 was so smushy the knives didn't work to cut it in.  I ended up finishing with a fork.

Flours #2-4 worked just fine with cutting in the flour.

After adding the water.  Flour #3 needed less water than the others.

Flour #1 rolled and transferred well but ended up with my least favorite taste.

Flours #2 and on were like this- too goopy and just stuck to the mat even with floured surface.

See?  Goopy.  I ended up scraping from the mat, rolling into a ball, patting out like a hamburger patty and finger patting into the cupcake container.

The finished products.  Two each of flour testers 1-4 (from left to right).

I used the rest of the filling to fill this pie plate (this is my Cooqi crust pie).  When Lydia Child said to use a deep dish, she wasn't kidding.  Even after my 8 testers (about 1/3 cup filling in each so almost 3 cups down) this went right to the tippy top.  It's also my only pie plate here.

You can see that the flours look like "regular" flour.  I think they would pass the looks test.

My poor large pie after it suffered temps ranging from 150 F to 400 F.  (The gas tank ran out while it was in the oven.)