Product Review: Pillsbury Gluten Free Pie Dough

My grandmother taught me how to make pie dough.  Shortening, flour, a little salt and a dash of water and voila! you have crispy, buttery, flaky goodness that you can use to envelop a sweet or savory dish.  You can't forget to take the scraps and add a little cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter to make pie crust rolls, which is always the best part (and the part that seems reasonable for a little girl to help with).

I admit it, I spent a long time judging store bought pie crusts and cookie doughs.  Sure, I'd eat a roll of Toll House cookie dough raw, I mean, who wouldn't?  Baking the dough into cookies, that's a whole different story.  Thanks to my talented mother and grandmother, we always had homemade baked goods in the house, and when it came to savory pies, it was no different.  Since going gluten free, I would say I eat about half from-scratch goodies, and about half from-box goodies.  There are some really great mixes out there, and with some things, I find that the from-box item is tastier than my from-scratch version.  In fact, my mom was able to make a delicious pecan pie for me this winter using a boxed flour mix, and it was an excellent substitute for the glutenful goodness I'm used to.

A few months ago, I saw posts on Facebook about how Pillsbury was coming out with some new gluten free, ready to use products.  When I was grocery shopping last week, I spotted the pie dough in the refrigerated aisle.  Out of curiosity, I picked it up, and also picked up the makings for a chicken pot pie.  I decided to wing it with this one, making up my own recipe, and it worked!

I followed the directions on the container.  Split the pie dough in half, kneaded it (it was pretty crumbly at first), and put it between two pieces of wax paper (standard pie dough protocol).

 After rolling out the bottom crust, and doing my best to place it in the pie dish, this happened:

It's okay, because even though it was fairly warm in my kitchen, (who bakes a chicken pot pie in the summer?) I was able to reassemble the bottom of the pie crust and even roll out a top crust.

Next, I baked some chicken tenderloins in a pan with a little coconut oil (to prevent sticking), salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I baked them for 20 minutes at 400*F.  I'm a huge fan of the all natural meats at the grocery store because they have a tender texture and better taste.

While the chicken was baking, I combined 2 cartons of Pacific Foods Cream of Chicken Soup, and one cup of Pacific Foods chicken stock in a saucepan. **These soups are gluten free. You can find the soup on Amazon.com (thanks, Mom!) and you can usually find the stock in the stores.  Your standard Campbell's soup doesn't cut it in the gluten free world.** I added 4 cubed red potatoes and a cup of petite cut baby carrots.  You could really use any other vegetables you wanted to, but I used what I had on hand.  I let that come to a simmer while the chicken finished baking.  It needed a little thickening so I added some cornstarch slurry (cornstarch and cold water pre-mixed).

When the chicken came out, I chopped it up into bite-sized pieces and added it to the bottom crust.  I poured the filling mixture over the chicken in the bottom crust and put my top crust on, trimming it and adjusting it to fit the pie plate.  I had to do some patchwork, but in the end it didn't matter.

Per the pie crust directions, I baked it for 30 minutes at 400*F and it came out like this:

The verdict: Pillsbury Gluten Free pie dough has a flaky texture and a good taste.  It tastes very similar to their glutenful pre-made pie crusts.  It was nice to be able to eat a chicken pot pie (it's been a long time) and I would consider using this dough again to make a dessert or another dinner entree.  I still think home made is best, so you will probably find me experimenting with homemade gluten free pie crust pretty soon.