Non-Dairy, Non-Margarine, Non-Soy Pie Crust!
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup olive oil + 2 capfuls
10-14 tablespoons *ice-cold* nondairy milk (I use oat milk; you can substitute with ice-cold water)
1. In a bowl, mix together the flour and salt. (You could also use a food processor.) With a fork, thoroughly stir in the olive oil a little bit at a time until it looks like little "pebbles".
2. Add the cold liquid, stirring in one tablespoon at a time. Stop adding liquid when the crust is just barely holding together (still crumbly, but you could make it stick together if you tried to ball it up).
3. Take half of the crust and roll it out flat on a piece of baking paper. Flour your hands, surface and rolling implement as often as needed to prevent sticking.
4. Repeat with second half. Now you have your top and bottom crusts. Poke the crust with a fork. If you're filling this with a no-bake pie, bake shell in 400 degree F oven for 15 minutes.
My husband and I have made this recipe over a dozen times by now, and it never fails to disappoint. We often combine this recipe with the Incredible This-will-become-your-favorite Veggie Pot Pie.
Source of recipe: This is a modified version of Diana's Desserts Vegetarian Pie Crust.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I made this pie crust last night, and then used it to make a tofu/veg/balsamic pot pie AND a batch of apple dumplings. Both were amazing. This really is a fabulous basic crust recipe!
I used whole wheat flour, cold coconut oil (a nice solid fat makes a better pie), and a few extra tablesppons of unsweetened soy milk (I know, I know, but that's what I had on hand). It gets super flaky if you add the oil/fat and then crumble & mush it with a fork for at least 3-4 minutes. My arm was sore by the end, but the finished produce was so worth it! Add the liquid slowly and knead it all in by hand. I had no problem rolling it out thin, you just have to go carefully.
A few more pointers to help anyone who is having a hard time with this crust:
1. If you don't like the taste of olive oil, try substituting sunflower -- there is virtually no oily taste, and it is definitely my favorite baking oil. If you want to use olive oil, I would recommend "light" instead of "extra virgin"
2. This crust will be different every time you make it, depending on current atmospheric conditions, planetary alignments, present altitude, rampant pheromones or whatever. You will sometimes need to increase the liquid to get it to hold together better when you roll it out. Add more liquid by the tablespoonful and test after each one until you get the desired consistency. I stop when the dough is just beginning to form a ball -- there should still be lots of crumbly little bits left. This is good because those crumbly bits translate into flakiness when you roll them into the main mass of dough.
Hope this helps :) And I totally agree with CowFreeMama -- please give us a soy-free tab! It's the devil's own nuisance trying to track down suitable recipes when most people just replace dairy ingredients with soy equivalents and call it good.
Good for you for not making a Soy crust! There are some great recipes on this site, but I wish they had a soy-free tab. SOY IS NOT HEALTHY! I substitute everything with coconut oil or coconut products. Here is a very well- researched article on the best health site out there, if you still think soy is good. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/18/soy-can-damage-your-health.aspx
My husband has gotten people with thyroid conditions in his practice so many times and told them to avoid soy, and after a few weeks, they were back to normal. Tofu, for example, is like eating aluminum cakes!
I will be trying this recipe soon! Thanks again!
Vegan butter seekers- look for earth balance, it's the best. Most grocery chains will carry it, and you can find it at your local health food store. I know people who live in the middle of no where and their grocery store carries it. If you can't find earth balance there are other non-dairy butters. I believe they were called benecol and smart balance.
Those worried about soy- don't worry so much. Soy, in general, is healthy, it is a bean. There are people who are allergic to it, and some companies process it so much it is unhealthy. If you see items like soy lichen, stay away. If it is soy, soy beans, soy milk, tofu, etc that is healthy soy.
At first attempt the dough was not cooperating with me. lol. So then I mixed in a little more liquid and that seemed to do it. I used whole wheat flour and that was a b*tch to roll out. But I worked though it. All said and done, it worked out just fine and was tasty. Thanks for posting :)
yeah this didn't work out for me. It tasted to much like oil. The dough would not role out and uh I just didn't like it at all. Sorry that I didn't enjoy it as much as you guys.. Maybe potpies aren't my thing...
I made the recipe and it came out just fine. I think maybe I might add a touch more salt as I find it to be a little bland but I also could have left my sauce a little less thick. I think I thickened it a little too much for a pot pie as when I would usually eat a pot pie I like to mix my crust with the sauce to give it some flavor. Also I found that when I reheated my pot pie the crust was a lot softer and flakier. So overall, I think the crust works just fine and I just need to make adjustments to my sauce. I covered it will foil when I reheated it in the oven so that the crust wouldn't burn and I think thats what kept it moist and soft. I made the vegan pot pie I found on this website and I used vegetable stock and flavored it with some garlic powder, salt, pepper, turmeric and cumin. The cumin made all the difference. Then I thickened it with a rue, which I used butter, wasn't happy about that but I forgot to buy cornstarch :(. It was wonderful. I used mushrooms, zucchini, frozen veg medly (corn, peas, green beans and carrots) frozen spinach that I thawed and squeezed all of the water out of and frozen broccoli. I sauteed the mushrooms with the zucchini and just heated up the all the frozen veg minus the spinach. I think I will be making this on a regular basis. Thanks again so much, sorry for the very long post.
Yay. I'm new to this site and a brand new Vegan. I know a lot about the lifestyle and have decided to go for it but with that I find nearly everything has soy in it and with being vegan I know thats a main ingredient. I'm concerned that it is not a very healthy ingredient so I'm attempting to avoid it at all costs and upon looking up recipes, many of them contain soy. I'm really excited to try yours out with the same pot pie recipe you mention. Thank you so much! I hope it goes well!
I know exactly how you feel! My husband and I aren't vegan, but we try to avoid milk products for health reasons, and are very leery of soy -- the research we've done on it brings up some serious questions about its safety in food products. So when we wanted to make a pie crust, we were really stuck!
I've been using this recipe for almost a year now, and it's been a real treat every time we've prepared it. Note that this pie crust will probably be a bit different every time you make it -- sometimes the amounts of oil and liquid need to be adjusted slightly to achieve the same consistency. But don't worry: even if a particular batch seems a bit too oily or too dry, it has always come out flaky and delicious for us. =) Good luck!
Oh THANK YOU
This is my first attempt at a pot pie (EVER) and since im A) vegan and B) unable to fine vegan marg/butter no matter where i look and C) does not own a credit card to buy some online.
Lol thanks again
Oh an how big are your cap fulls? Because my olive oil bottle has a very small cap
I haven't been on this site for a long while now, so I'm sorry if I'm getting back to you really late on this. I was using the cap off the olive oil bottle, which came out to about 1 tsp of liquid per cap (guestimating here). Sometimes the crust needs less oil -- I've found that when I made this with whole wheat instead, I could omit the extra capfuls and the crust was *almost* too oily. Hope that helps!
Yay. I'm new to this site and a brand new Vegan. I know a lot about the lifestyle and have decided to go for it but with that I find nearly everything has soy in it and with being vegan I know thats a main ingredient. I'm concerned that it is not a very healthy ingredient so I'm attempting to avoid it at all costs and upon looking up recipes, many of them contain soy. I'm really excited to try yours out with the same pot pie recipe you mention. Thank you so much! I hope it goes well!
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