Country Style Gluten Free Saskatoon Pie

In the theme of pies, I want to share with you my recent creation of this Saskatoon Berry Pie. When I moved to Edmonton (this August marks 9 years!), I kept hearing about these berries called Saskatoon Berries. I was hooked on the berries when I tried a saskatoon pie purchased at the St. Albert Farmer's Market. Over the years I also learned that you could actually pick your very own saskatoon berries in and around the Edmonton area. So last year Dan and I made some attempts to pick our own berries, but by the time we went all the Saskatoon Berries were gone! Flash forward to this year when I was more than determined to pick our own. Because of the hot summer we heard people started picking them extra early so we started on Canada Day, July 1 and after a run in the Whitemud Creek area picked a significant amount of Saskatoon berries (almost 400g).

Who would have thought these little dark purple-red berries would be so addictive? Since we had picked our own berries, I knew that the first item that I wanted to bake was my own Saskatoon Berry Pie. Now a whole pie is a lot for just the two of us, so we decided on creating a Gluten Free Saskatoon Pie that we could share with some friends that were gluten free. The pie dough recipe is similar to that of a pate sucree. We found that we needed to use a bit of cream cheese to get the pie dough to be more malleable and to not crumble immediately upon rolling.

Ingredients for Filling

• 437g Saskatoon Berries (rinsed and drained)
• 1 1/2 tbsp water
• 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• 100g sugar
• 28g oat flour
• pinch of ground nutmeg

Ingredients for Gluten Free Pie Dough

• 240g Oat Flour
• 75g Icing Sugar
• 35g Almond Flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 145g unsalted butter; cubed
• 2 tbsp cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

*grind up gluten free oats to make oat flour or purchase gluten free oat flour

Directions for Pie Dough:

1. Sift oat flour, icing sugar, almond flour and salt together.
2. In a bowl or using a stand mixer add cold butter and cream cheese. Mix on low speed until texture is sandy.
3. Add egg and vanilla extract to the mixture.
4. Transfer contents of bowl onto a clean counter and combine mixture together.
5. Form 2 equal size balls of gluten free dough. Wrap with saran wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
6. After an hour remove both balls of dough from the fridge. Working quickly roll one of the halves flat (1/2 to 1/4 inch thick). Due to the sticky texture of this dough, rolling it between two sheets of saran wrap was best in order to make rolling and transferring to the pie dish easier. 
7. Carefully transfer the dough to a buttered pie pan. 
8. Trim edges of pie and push down as needed for evenness. 
9. Poke a few holes into the bottom of the pie dough with a fork.

Directions For Filling:

1. Place saskatoon berries, water, lemon juice and sugar in a pot and cook over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Stir occasionally.
2. Once mixture simmers, stir in the oat flour and nutmeg. Set aside until assembly.

Assembly:

1. Pour filling into the assembled pie shell.
2. Roll out the other half of the pie dough using the same method and gently place on top of the pie.
3. Using fingers, gently press the top and bottom pie dough together.
4. Cut slits in the top of the pie using a knife. 
5. Bake at 375F for 45-50 minutes until the crust is golden brown.

Our Gluten Free Saskatoon Berry Pie tastes just like a good solid saskatoon berry pie should taste. The oat flour gives a slight nuttiness to the pie, but works very well with the taste of the saskatoon berries. We made our own oat flour by blending (gluten free) quick oats in our Vitamix.  Normally, gluten free pie doughs require some sort of gum to help the dough keep together which is why we added cream cheese (it naturally has xanthan gum). Due to the nature of the ingredients in the pie dough, you do have to work fairly quickly with the dough as it is sticky. Overall, I am super happy with pie, filling and all. Our friends and family loved it too and they could barely tell that it was gluten free. Try this recipe out and let me know how it goes.