Gluten Free Pastry

I made this using a whole egg, and the pastry turned out perfectly, my brother-in-law has since tried and is very impressed!

I made this pastry adding an egg yolk as suggested by Hazel and using 10% Gram flour as suggested by Peter.
I'm not known for making great pastry but this came out BRILLIANTLY.
Light, crispy and with a really buttery shortcrusty texture. Other half was very impressed as I made it up as a Bakewell Tart, which is his absolute favourite (see Bakewell recipe for almondless tart!)

I usually add an egg to give better binding and find that this makes the pastry softer and far easier to roll. I am also dairy intolerant and use dairy free soya margarine which makes no difference compared to when I used butter. Hope this helps

I used to find gluten free pastry was hard. Now I make it this way and it is short and crisp. Note the use of bread flour which I use for everything.

4 oz white bread flour
2 oz butter (at room temperature)
2 tbsp water

Mix flour and butter as for normal pastry. Sprinkle water over the mixture then squeeze it all together by hand, working in the last crumbs of dry mix - don't be tempted to add extra water.
Use straight away while it's soft. Ignore all instructions about leaving it to rest and putting it in the fridge. Bake as for normal pastry, but don’t expect it to brown.

I made a large batch using a 250gm pack of butter, 500gm flour and 8 tbsp water - I also added about a level tsp gluten free baking powder and ½ tsp salt, but doubt it made much difference. This produced a crisp pastry (for mince pies) which didn't fall apart.

Any leftover pastry - add handfuls of grated cheese to taste - roll out thickly and cut into strips to make cheesy biscuits / cheese straws.

I have found that making 10% of the flour* gram flour gives a softer, more flexible pastry. I was tipping the baking beans out of a base made with this and it slipped half out of the tin and didn't break!

We did it like that at the weekend as a rich shortcrust with an egg yolk and sugar for a lemon meringue pie at the weekend. It was very good and still is from the fridge 3 days later.

*So for this recipe 20g gram flour and 180g GF flour mix.

I also found the pastry very hard when baked. I am dairy intolerant so had to use a sunflower spread. Would this have made any difference? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

i made some mince pies to day with this recipe i change the flour they turn out great .

Changed the recipe slightly by using 5oz of butter (softened at room temperature)and 4tbsp of cold water - worked brilliant.

We always have good results with this recipe using real butter and adding liquid until the pastry becomes slightly sticky. After resting the pastry for half an hour it becomes less sticky. For ease roll the pastry out between two sheets of cling film

I made the pastry, but when cooked it was so hard that I couldn't get the knife through it. Help, what did I do wrong?