The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Perfect pies possible
Georgia bakers share advice and recipes for contest winning pies.
There’s no question Southerners love their pies. The Midwest might think of itself as “Pie Central” but we claim pecan, Key lime, buttermilk, lemon chess, blackberry, sweet potato, shoo fly, muscadine and Mississippi mud pies as our own.
And although Southerners enjoy their pie all year, in the run-up to Thanksgiving, the most pie-centric holiday of all, pie baking rises to the level of obsession.
Ready to claim title as one of metro Atlanta’s best pie bakers, entrants from Cobb, Cherokee and Fulton counties competed last month in the Cherokee Pie Challenge. Their pies had to include at least one locally grown ingredient, and the crust, if any, had to be homemade.
Part of National Farmers Market Week in August, the Cherokee Pie Challenge is sponsored by the Cherokee County Farm Bureau. The competing pies were the firstplace winners from contests at the Acworth Farmers Market, Canton Farmers Market, Roswell Farmers and Artisans Market, Sweet Apple Farmers and Artisans Market, Waleska Farmers Market at Reinhardt University and Woodstock Farm Fresh Market.
Judges Woolery Back of Roswell’s Table and Main; Brian Jones, Chef de Cuisine at Kennesaw State University; Micki Kimberly of Linton’s at the Atlanta Botanical Garden; Daniel Porubianski of Woodstock’s Century House Tavern, and Tony Pisconeri of Pisconeri Studios in Jasper rated the pies for such things as originality, taste and appearance, and the prize-winning bakers got bragging rights as well as blue, red and yellow ribbons.
Top prize winner in the youth category proved an award-winning pie doesn’t have to have a crust. Eight-year-old Hannah Harrison of Woodstock won first place in the youth category of both the Woodstock Farm Fresh Market and the Cherokee Pie Challenge with her crustless Old Fashioned Soda Cracker Pie.
Hannah’s mother, Erin Harrison, says Hannah enjoys helping in the kitchen prepping vegetables, walking through recipes and just keeping an eye on things in general. But the baker in the family is Harrison’s mom, Kristen Hester, known to her granddaughter as “Mimi.” Hester learned about the pie contest and decided to work with her granddaughter on a recipe that wouldn’t need a crust, since a crust might be beyond the skills of the then seven-year-old.
Grandmother and granddaughter found a recipe online and worked their way through it. The pie rose too high, so they cut back on the baking powder. It called for raspberries, and first they tried peaches, then made one more substitution. “Mimi and Hannah thought coconut would be better and wouldn’t compete with the flavor of the pecans. They made the perfected pie and were very excited when it won the first contest,” said Harrison.
“Hannah prepared the pie for the final contest completely by herself, with CLOSE supervision from me, and was thrilled to win the youth category. She hopes to enter the contest again next year and looks forward to becoming the one everyone looks to for the best baked treats in the family.”
Hannah has three tips for pie bakers. The first two came from her baby sitters and the third from her grandmother. All hold true no matter what you’re doing in the kitchen.
1. Wash your hands before you start.
2. Make sure you have all your ingredients out before you get started, in case you’re missing something.
3. Never measure anything over the bowl you’re mixing in, in case you over-pour.
Roswell resident Holly Reynolds entered her pear pie in the contest at the encouragement of a neighbor. “She said, ‘You’re a great baker. You should enter.’ I do love to bake and am always taking things to work and giving them away to neighbors. But I had only ever made two crusts myself and the first one had been a complete failure, so it was scary.”
Preparing for competition pushed her to perfect her pie crust. “It also drove me to really pay attention to the details. I went out of my way to find specific designs for the crust and bought stencils for creating fondant for cakes to make the leaves and filigree for the top crust. I learned a lot.”
One tip for other pie makers? “I found that you need to pay attention to how you put the fruit in the pie so the top crust will sit properly. Level the filling so the crust will lay nicely.”
Not all prize-winning pies are sweet. Christina Rhoades of Acworth entered both a tomato pie and a shrimp-and-grits pie and won prizes for both.
“This is my third year entering the pie competition. My grandmother was a caterer in South Carolina and a very good baker and that’s how I got started. I use her crust recipe in all my pies. It’s very basic, very old school, it never fails you and it always turns out flaky. Back in the day, though, it would have been made with lard. I use Crisco,” says Rhoades.
Growing up in South Carolina, shrimp and grits was a favorite dish. “We’d go on vacation to Hunting Island or Hilton Head, and every restaurant has a version of shrimp and grits. For the competition I decided I’d work on turning a dish that I like into a pie.”
The key turned out to be getting the grits just right. “I played
around with it for a couple of weeks and went from cooking the grits in just water to the mix of chicken broth and half-and-half.
A little egg to bind the mixture, some hot sauce and plenty of cheese made for the final winning mixture.”
Rhoades’ tips for prizewinning pies?
Be comfortable with the recipe. If you’ve never baked it before, do a test pie. And for competitions, think outside the box, like her trick of turning a favorite entree into a sliceable treat.
Five pie-making tips from top Atlanta pastry chefs:
1. “Read entire recipe before you begin.” Chrysta Poulos, Creative Director of Pastry for Ford Fry Restaurants. 2. “The fat you use makes a big difference! Lard is truly the best thing to use but some people are turned off by it … so sad. Vegetable shortening is second in effectiveness and (believe it or not) butter is the least desirable in this chef ’s opinion.” Zeb Stevenson of Watershed.
3. “Always have a bowl of ice nearby while working with dough. Many of us have hot hands, which is often the culprit when dough shrinks or becomes tough. Before you touch the dough, dunk those hands in ice water, dry them off quickly and then proceed.” Eric Wolitzky, executive pastry chef for Fifth Group Restaurants.
4. “Don’t be afraid of your dough! Many new bakers assume that you have to slowly and laboriously roll out dough, but the longer you leave it out, the warmer the dough is going to get. Warm dough is more difficult to roll. You also don’t want to work the dough too much, as that will build up gluten.
As with all baking, work quickly and efficiently. Don’t worry too much about perfection – it will happen with practice.” David Campbell, executive pastry chef for The Ritz-Carlton, Reynolds Lake Oconee.
5. “I love fruit pies and recommend using wonderful in-season fruits or foraging fruits yourself.
Georgia has an amazing selection of produce, and whether it’s apples, strawberries, peaches, blueberries or even pecans, buying them locally and in season seriously starts your pie out at perfect.” Sarah Dodge, pastry chef for 8ARM.