Pies are wonderful things.

People love pie.

I mean, it's just delicious.

Pure and simple.

Oh, it's the perfect food.

It's fruity.

I mean, pies are made generally from fruit.

And a good crust, a crust that you don't have to have a chainsaw to get through it.

It's a lot of fun.

And it's more fun.

with a little ice cream on top, besides.

In fact, if I only eat one other food for the rest of my life it would be pie.

Pie just gives you a sense of comfort.

I love any kind of pie.

Sweet pie.

In a big variety of flavors, pies have the simple, sweet ability to please people for lots of reasons.

It has crust and fruit has all the best things put together.

I don't know, it's kind of an American tradition thing, I guess.

And pie is good.

You know, there's a whole quart of fruit in each one and you got to eat fruit.

It's practically good for you.

Go.

So we've gone looking for pies across the United States, from Maine to Montana.

People think that they can't make pie.

So they search out places to buy pie.

You know, different states are known for different types of pies.

It's comfort food.

It's the United States to Minnesota.

It's comfort food.

It's like baseball and everything else.

I get a lot of customers say, oh, this reminds me of what my grandma used to make.

Just the right amount of sugar.

Fresh, ripe fruit and a really crusty crust.

We've tasted pies and talked to people who make them and eat them.

I don't I don't really like desserts, but I love pie.

Pie is so approachable.

Everyone has had it before.

Everyone knows it speaks to everyone.

It's homemade, its comforting.

Like homemade apple pie is like my favorite.

We never want to claim that this is a list of America's best pies.

It's the one you're eating at the moment is.

Is your favorite piece.

There's no way we could discover and include all the worthy spots.

We just hope to find a few good pie places.

We know there were more, and we'll keep looking.

And we hope you will too.

I wouldn't trust somebody if they didn't eat pie.

A few good pie places was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Now, there are no real pie rules, but you can often find a good pie place in a small town like in Westfield, New York.

I just can't believe I got, we've got a pie shop.

A great pie shop, the best pies in New York State.

The place is called Portage Pie.

It's owned and operated by the Thayer family.

Connie, her husband Jack, and their son Jack.

The Chautauqua Institution is about eight miles away.

So that brings us a lot of business.

We get people from all over the world here.

It's really awesome.

You got anything that's a big pie?

Like two big pies maybe Blueberry, cherry, red raspberry and strawberry rhubarb.

My husband and I bought this building 2009 when we first looked at it.

It was in really rough shape, and everybody in town thought we were absolutely nuts to make a pie shop here, and furthermore, nuts to even make a pie shop.

For years she made, pies for my sister at fruit stand over in Mayville.

And, people always loved her pies.

I don't know any other thing to say.

She said, here's what I want you to do.

And I did it.

I mean, that's what I do for her because I love her.

You know?

I will take, cherry and blueberry.

Cherry?

Blueberry.

That's 32.

And I'll be right back with the cherry.

Jack Junior quit his job as an environmental scientist to come home and work with pies.

I wasn't here when the doors opened, but, you know, as far as I could tell, it was it was slow for, like, the first, maybe couple of weeks.

But then I think as soon as people started trying it, it just took right off.

And we've been just selling pies ever since.

We sell sometimes 100 a day or even more.

So we're really it's been just busy, busy, busy.

We're trying cherry for the first time.

Try the pecan.

Well, when I came here, I came to open a restaurant and somebody said, what are you going to do for dessert?

I said, I have no idea.

And they said, well, go see Portage Pie across the street.

Just standard pie making stuff here.

I came and saw Connie and said, hey, we want to use your pies in our restaurant.

And she said, well, I'm not giving you a discount.

Everybody seems to like our pies.

So I said, we didn't ask for discount, did I?

She said, well, no.

I said, don't you sell every pie you make.

She goes, yeah, I said, I wouldn't give it to anybody discount either.

We don't have any problem selling them.

She said, oh, I like you.

She said, all right, we can do business.

The secret is there's no secrets.

We work pretty good together.

We start around 6 or 630 in the morning, and then we basically, you know, rather than get here at like, 1 or 2, we'd rather just sell warm pies.

As the day goes on.

We got an apple crumb.

Smells good.

And it's red hot.

I don't think I had a good crust until I met my wife.

Now, I'd always say I don't like pie too much.

She goes, you gotta be kidding me.

But now I really love it because I finally realized how good it was.

Simple recipe for the crust.

And it tastes really good.

Flour, Crisco, salt and water.

That's it.

Nothing special.

It's the irregularities in the crust that really give it the flakiness.

So if you use top quality fruit, top quality ingredients and roll the dough out properly, bake them properly.

You got a pie?

Apple two crust.

Traditional apple pie.

With a little more time.

They need to bake for more than an hour.

If they're not boiling in the middle, they're not done.

If your oven doesn't look like somebody, try to start a fire in it.

You're not making the pies right.

On some days, grandchildren will come to learn some of the family business.

But everybody in my family is a really excellent pie maker.

So that's why to me, when people get so excited about our pies, I just think their regular pie, that's how they're supposed to be.

Yeah.

We had the honor of making a pie for Ken Burns this summer.

He was at the Chautauqua Institution for the week, and we were able to get a pie into him.

So it was really.

It's an honor.

It's great.

Hey, I have Ken Burns signature.

What can I say?

It's great, I think.

It's hard to believe, isn't it, that you can actually make a living.

I mean, we bought everything in this building with pie.

It's funny because when we haven't had one for a while, we're like, oh, let's eat one of those pies.

And it's like, oh, yeah, now I get it.

Why they everybody now we know why they like them.

Yeah.

There are many reasons why people like pies and fruit piled up like a mountain might be one.

If you're in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in Northern California and you're on the old Lincoln Highway, you will want to stop at this place called Ikedas.

We are a roadside stand, roadside fruit stand with very fine wines, nice meats and fantastic apple pies.

They have the best pie in all of Placer County.

We don't live nearby, so we, we're always traveling back and forth to a cabin up in Truckee.

So we try to stop here.

On the way up It was blueberry on the way back its razzleberry.

They're really the best pies I've ever had.

Glenn Ikeda has worked here since he was a boy.

My parents started farming.

Oh, in the 40s.

They wanted to sell their fruits to the locals.

We built this store here in 1970, but in the 50s, they were actually a little wagon.

On the side of the road is how they started.

So it's about 50, 50, 60 years.

We've been here.

Used to be a little tiny fruit stand and, yeah, the pies are still great.

I said, let's take some of that ripe fruit.

We're already making too much jam and jelly, and we devised a way to make pies out of the fresh, ripe fruit.

And from there, we said, if I could sell 30 pies a day, I could break even.

And the first day we sold 100 pies.

And now we're more popular for our pies and, then actually everything else in the store.

We make the apple and the all the berry pies fresh every single day.

Everything is done by hand.

We don't do machinery, so the pies all are done by different workers.

You'll see every person has a certain type of crimp.

Every person has a certain type of layout.

How they put the crust on.

We grow the fruit that goes into the pies.

I think that's a very important part of why our pies are so good.

The Ikeda farms are just a couple of miles away, and Glen said he'd show us some of the trees.

We are in the ranch that grows all the apples and the peaches and the berries that we put into our pies.

It's about 45 acres.

Ten of it is apples, 30 acres and nectarines and peaches.

But these trees aren't full of fruit right now.

They are dormant.

They're sleeping.

And you need to have enough cold weather that they sleep for at least a month and a half.

Otherwise, the fruit doesn't set as well.

Alberto is here, and he's farming and getting the trees ready for the spring, when they'll set with blossoms and we'll get fruit, hopefully.

Better get some water this year.

Alberto.

No water.

We're in trouble.

Yes.

Apples that are properly stored can be used through the winter months.

And here many end up coming to this wonderful contraption not far from the kitchen.

The unique machine made by a company called FBPs out of New York.

Literally.

We're working with antique machines.

You place the apple, the spindle comes up, injects itself into the apple, and then it rotates around a blade.

The spindle comes out.

The apple falls down onto a lever that pushes it down to a chute that falls into the bottom.

Then the apples are sliced and spiced and get mounded into sizable pies by the team of bakers here.

And we couldn't do without them.

They know how to make the pie just right.

It looks perfect.

The look and the feel and the taste becomes part of their product.

They go, challah, Sylvia.

Here we go.

It's comida.

Ah Don, you need to try too.

This is probably as close to grandma's pies as they come.

Not too sweet, not too tart.

Apple pie there.

Look at that baby right there.

Can taste the apple.

Lots of cinnamon.

Not too much nutmeg.

That it is still warm.

It's still warm, How can you beat that?

Cobbler.

Cobbler It is, I won over the cherry.

We sell a lot of pies.

Almost 80 to 100,000 pies a year.

The best.

The best pies.

There's nothing more American than an apple pie.

Everybody loves pie.

And so we're happy that we're being able to be successful raising the fruit and putting in the pies.

And I think now we have the perfect apple pie.

It's a beauty.

Looking for beautiful pies may lead you to a city like Portland, Maine, where before you head for the docks, you may want to check out the small bakery called Two Fat Cats.

A little hard to find because it's set back, but we found it.

We come up to Portland to go out to Peaks Island, and we always park in this area so we can go to two fat cats on our way to the ferry.

Everybody who lives here knows this place.

Their pies are wonderful.

Two Fat Cats bakery.

The place is owned and run by Stacey Began, who bought the business and its name.

It's called Two Fat Cats because when the bakery was started, the upstairs was actually an apartment and one of the owners lived up there with her two fat cats, Lily and Jackie.

And, the cats.

You can see the cats peeking out of the windows upstairs.

We're really small bakery, but we like to steal a line from Shakespeare and say we're small but fierce.

This is our bake area.

Everything goes on here.

We're making pies pretty much seven days a week.

Yes, we make a lot of pies.

Yeah.

James Fitz is part of the pie team.

There are other bakeries I've worked in in town where I'm kind of in the back.

You know, the background, and people don't get to see what I'm doing.

But here, customers come in because customers go and I get to see them enjoy what I've made.

And it's really, really cool, really gratifying.

So people produce traditional pies here.

Most of the day.

But two fat cats also has a reputation for the thing known as a whoopie pie.

People come from all over to try our weekly pies.

It's really crazy.

It's more like a cake, but it's the snack food of Maine Mainers love their whoppie pies.

Pumpkin whoopie pies are my favorite and I have tried whoppie pie, pumpkin whoppie pie from from all different places around and they have the best pumpkin whoppie pies in Maine or in New Hampshire or anywhere that I've had a whoppie pie.

We always have our chocolate whoppie pies available.

And then in the fall, through the winter, we do our pumpkin.

So it's a pumpkin cake.

Really, really moist.

And then the filling is a maple marshmallow butter cream.

It's very good.

Well, it's called a pie.

You might consider it just one of the many kinds they make here.

The most popular is the wild Maine blueberry.

Half a cup of lemon juice.

Blueberries.

Here, you mix that up.

Maine blueberries are very different than cultivated blueberries.

Mainers love them, and people who come to Maine to visit have heard of the wild Maine blueberries.

And so they usually want to try something that has Maine blueberries in it.

All right.

It looks about the right color.

And then we're just going to let that sit.

Maine blueberry pie is the best.

This is a black and blue.

And I like it because it's an unusual combination of blackberries, blueberries and ginger.

A little bit of ginger changes everything.

And the lattice crust, it just looks beautiful.

It makes you look like you want you want a slice.

And they do such a great job with our crimping.

You know, it looks homemade, but better than homemade.

As the day turns to night, Sarah Laura joins the pie team.

She and James get the pies ready for a late night bake.

So once we get all the pies ready to go in the oven, we'll milk and sugar them and put them in the oven for about 45 minutes.

It's usually a little longer.

We, use a milk coating, and we use a granulated sugar on top.

Yep.

Milk.

This is like, the best part.

People also really like a lot of sugar.

So that's one thing that we get asked a lot is can I have that one with with the sugar on it?

It's always wonderful when people come in and, and we can make their day with something that tastes really good and, you know, lifts their spirits.

So I mean, it's a great job.

Yeah.

It's a whole team effort all comes together pretty well.

Team effort is a good thing, but a well-seasoned star is also an advantage.

In the borough of Millville, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh.

Early most mornings, you may see Frank Ruzomberka arriving at work.

I don't even call it work.

I can't wait to get here.

I don't know if that's what you call work or not, but I can't wait to get here every day.

And that's the way it's been all my life.

I bake pie, I make all the desserts, whatever they need.

I made them.

And I get here at 630 every day.

Naming a place Grant Bar Frank's family had this restaurant and bar for many years now it's owned by a group of employees.

My mom and dad started this place in 1933.

My father and mother came from Czechoslovakia in the late 20s.

My my family had seven children and everybody worked.

I was working when I was six.

Me and my brothers ran the business for a long time, and, we were always missing desserts.

So I started making apple pies.

When we got here, You know, I'm looking on the menu and it says world famous pies.

So how can you not get a pie?

At a place that says World famous.

This is an institution in the borough of Millville.

It's an institution for many reasons, one of them being these pies.

I get pie every time I'm here.

But the coconut pie.

Last time we missed it, we waited till we were finished to order and they were out.

So we ordered dessert first.

We know Frank and Frank makes them fresh every day.

It's a good basic traditional crust that I like.

I don't want to change it.

Lard, flour, salt water.

But I make cream pies, so I need a crust.

It stays quite crunchy because it might sit for three, four hours and and and and in my recipe I need a thin pie crust and I need it.

Cook.

Well, I just been doing it for so long, I just sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing.

I just do it, you know?

Probably thousands.

I don't know why, I never think to get a cream pie I always get something with apple normally.

Yeah.

Ive never tasted a pie better than that really.

I appreciate that I really I that's my favorite pie that I love the texture of this coconut cream pie.

It's just like the flavor is perfect.

And we're going to make six coconut now.

I use three cups of milk per pie three quarters a cup of sugar.

And then I put arrowroot in instead of flour.

There's no taste so I use arrowroot to thicken it.

No coconut flavor, none at all.

I baked my own coconut raw coconut in it, and that's the biggest job that takes three hours.

I do a couple gallons, but I do that ahead of time.

So it's all toasted.

So I just add that toasted coconut to it.

I put cupful in every pie, plus the stuff like top and it only last one day.

The next day, if we're getting left, I throw it out.

I make another one.

So it's it's it's no artificial stuff in it.

It's just everything about it.

I mean, the crust is good the filling is good.

It's got a lot of coconut.

It's got a lot of taste.

It's a good piece of pie.

And the Grant Bar is definitely is is a paradigm of what makes this area so strong and what makes this area so special, and what makes us all want to come back here and have a have a slice of pie.

That's really good.

Yeah, I sort of got to.

Sometimes picking the right kind of pie can be uplifting.

And in central Virginia, near the town of Ellon, there's a small cafe and pie shop called Woodruff Store that may seem a bit like heaven.

Early in the morning, Angela Woodruff Scott and her mother, Mary Fanny Woodruff, get the day started.

You need to eat your breakfast, mom.

Well, I'm drinking my coffee Okay.

What type of pie are you making now?

Lemon meringue.

The Woodruff family has been at this spot for years.

The 1951, my mother, Mary, and my father opened this as a gas station and a grocery store.

And, they ran this place for a little over 30 years.

I've been here all my life.

I was married to my husband 63 years when he passed away.

So that makes me pretty old, doesnt it?

And so we had a family reunion early in the 90s, and we researched a lot of the family history and found out a lot about our family on this corner since the latter part of the 1800s.

So I thought it would be a great thing if we opened it back up.

She made it a pie shop.

I had groceries and a filling station.

God just gave me this vision that I was supposed to open this and carry on my family's tradition, and I had sweet potato pie every Friday and Saturday.

Sweet potatoes only I never did bake anything but sweet potato pie.

I opened it in 98.

I knew that people loved pies, so I just started making pie.

And here we are.

The menu is very simple.

You get a nice lunch and then you get a piece of pie and you go home feeling good about yourself.

People really feel loved when they're eating pie.

It's I hear it all the time.

We just have a good time talking and joking and people love it.

They love to sit with mama because she's she loves to talk.

So I came in and sat down the first day.

I didn't know any of these folks, but I had a think I had a sandwich.

And then my first slice of pie, and maybe 1 or 2 more before I got out the door.

But for a long time it was just me and mama.

Then my sisters retired and they came, you know, and started helping.

Angie's older sisters are twins, Darnell and Darnet and Darnet learned to make fried pies from their mother.

She wouldn't let me vary from her old recipe.

No kind of way I had to do it.

Exactly right.

They are good.

And they sell fast, that's our bestseller.

The fried pie.

It's just so crispy, crunchy and delicious.

And then the soft filling.

Oh my goodness.

I probably eat more slices than I do of the fried pies, but I love the fact that I can just take a fried pie with me.

You know, pies are warm and sweet, and if you like what you're doing, they will have just a love will just be there.

Tell people all the time it's not about the pie.

So much.

People enjoy it.

It's fun.

We make it fun.

And sometimes we sing every day.

Every day you'll hear someone singing something.

The whole atmosphere.

So, Hey, happy day.

Ill Search heaven for you.

First I shall greet my savior.

My savior and my king.

The one who brought me Savior.

The dangers that I've seen and unseen, then Ill kneel at Jesus feet.

Praise, oh, praise his holy name.

Ill Search heaven for you.

You just be surprised at the people's faces when they walk in here.

I mean, they're, and it's really special.

When they walk in, there's a smile and they come right to mama and they sit down, and it's.

It's really amazing how people feel when they get that feeling of being at home.

Or just being loved.

I think the pies are what they sell, the love is what they give away.

Search the four corners.

Of Heaven for you.

Will you be looking for me?

You going be looking for me?

If you got the pie, if you got the pie in the hand, Ill be looking for you.

Oh.

The search for good pie may never end.

For some, it's 24/7 and that may mean you should head for Underhill, Vermont.

There, Paula and Jamie Eisenberg have a shop called Poorhouse Pies in their little yellow house.

We are a very small, local bakery.

We do pies and donuts for wholesale and retail.

We needed to make some money.

Jamie lost her job.

It was the spring of 2009, right around when the recession hit.

I lost a pretty good job.

And, Paula and I were sitting at the kitchen table kind of tongue in cheek, joking about, winding up in the poorhouse, sort of not joking and joking at the same time.

I guess we just said, what's going to make us some money?

And, we decided on pie.

We needed something to keep us out of the poorhouse, and we said poorhouse pies.

Exactly.

We started in our private kitchen, and before we knew it, we were totally out of space.

So we said, well, let's ditch the living room.

We've dragged all the furniture out of there and started putting in some equipment, and that became our little bake shop right there.

These are the different markings.

You need to have a different marking for every pie, so you can tell what it is after it's baked.

This is the blueberries mark It's, interesting coming up with a different shape for every single kind of pie we make.

this is a raspberry.

Has nothing to do with raspberries, but it looks nice.

I use shortening in my crust Because I want it to be flaky.

I make the doughs.

There are two different doughs we use.

Mine is an egg base to create dough.

It's got sugar in it.

I use those for the bottom crust, for the the shells, for the cream pies.

I mean, I make the pies that your grandmother from Vermont would recognize.

Jamie makes the pies that your grandmother from new Jersey would probably really like.

You name it, we'll, one, mix it up and do the crazy combos.

And, so we do all styles.

I make the fillings all separate.

Whatever I'm going to need for the week.

I make a big pile of, dough.

And then on pie days, it's just a matter of just putting it all together and baking it.

This is egg wash.

This is going to make them nice and golden.

And it'll also help the sugar stick on the top.

I can fit 12 if I arrange them well.

Now Poorhouse Pies has a few wholesale accounts, but they also sell their wares in a small structure in the yard beside their house.

The shed was an old garden shed.

We had, just kind of kicking around.

I'm pretty sure it was Jamie who said, you know, why don't we just put pie in there and have people come and buy it?

It's all self-service.

There's a bank in there.

It's a very old tradition.

The farm stand tradition that you just, honor system .

The bank is an old mailbox, yes We keep an eye on things when we're home.

And, when we see a lot of traffic, we bring a lot more pies out and, it's pretty much, 24, seven business.

People, I think they feel a connection.

You know, they this is their pie house, and they can leave a note and they can say, this is my little spot now.

So we drove up and you see pie and you see a sign and we walk up and it says self-service and it says open so many days.

And it has a list of all the pies.

We put pie out there.

And we said, pay what you want.

And people did they have key lime pie.

Yes.

That's your favorite.

Yes.

Oh man.

I was driving that way and I saw a sign for pies.

And so I thought, well, that's pretty cool, you know, because it sounded like it was going to be awfully homemade.

People shop for pie.

They leave money in the bank.

They often leave us a note.

The whole place is plastered with notes from people.

I love the notes.

My my new favorite one.

Well, our very favorite one, of course, is I love you, Pie Lady.

And I would love to know who left that note.

And we love it when you know they come from far away and they say, oh, I drove all the way from, you know, Montana.

But my new favorite is Pies Saved My life.

That's a good one.

You have that appreciation.

Someone has made something and it can make it better.

It's something very special for people, something that we like to think that, you know, people are leaving here, going back to wherever and saying oh remember that pie shed we went to in Vermont, you know, isn't that awesome?

We're constantly amazed at how well we do.

No question.

Pie places can be memorable for wonderful reasons.

Consider this little corner pie shop and cafe where even before it opens, even before dawn, bakers here are busy producing pies.

This is A La Mode Pies.

We're in Seattle, on Phinney Avenue, right across the street from the Woodland Park Zoo.

Alexandra Webber is the manager here.

It's beautiful.

I love watching the sunrise in the morning.

It's a great location.

People come, after the zoo or before the zoo.

We get a lot of people coming in around 8 p.m.

for after dinner pie.

The cafe opens at 8 a.m.

and closes at 9 p.m.

every single day.

That's Chris Porter, Seattle's pie guy.

He founded this place in 2011.

It started as like ten pies out of out of my own kitchen and has now grown to, you know, it's it's we almost sell about $1 million worth of, of pie every year.

So it's just exponentially grown.

And I think part of the reason why it has grown is I think people can actually taste the passion that goes into the pie.

I mean, we're crazy about making sure that our pies are fantastic.

This is Amara.

She's our lead baker.

She's been here for a couple of months now.

And this is Sam.

Sam started on Pi Day last year.

So he's been here for almost a year.

I'm making blue Hawaiian fillings.

Or for our blue Hawaiian pie, which is our signature pie.

It was the first pie I ever created.

I would say the day that I made the decision to open the pie shop, it's really good.

It's one of those pies that people have a lot of questions about.

But then when they try it, they can't help but love it.

It's my husband's favorite pie.

I kind of had to come together, and I kind of picked out all these different products like blueberries and crushed pineapple and toasted coconut.

Everything that I loved about pie.

You know, my favorite here is their blue Hawaiian.

I just thought that was a really, really interesting concept.

It's really nice and it's refreshing because you get that like pineapple and the blueberries, and then you get the warmness of the coconut and the vanilla and it's still warm.

It's wonderful.

We've had some customers that have literally come in here every single day since the very beginning.

It has become my cafe.

It's my secret little place.

And A La Mode has frequent pie buyer cards too.

Buy ten slices, get one free.

I'm on my second card now, so I'm not real good at those card things.

I just do what I do.

So I'm on card number 75, which is 700, and I actually this is 752.

And don't forget this shop is called A La Mode.

Ice cream on top is definitely an option.

A big lump of ice cream on pretty much any dessert will help it.

All pies are better with ice cream.

There's nothing better than the ooze that comes out of a slice and mixing that kind of gravy.

And that that beautiful juice with the ice cream.

I mean, it's magical.

I really think that the crust is the most important thing.

And and it's really difficult.

One of the reasons they do such a nice job here is because I think he uses a little bit of lard.

We use butter and lard, and flour, a little bit of sugar and salt and thats it.

Well, we make all of our crust in small batches.

Just like grandma, we have lots of butter bits in our crust.

I would say that is the.

That is the secret to any good pie crust is butter bits.

I don't know if you can see, but you can see the little.

Little bits we got going on in here.

Because what happens when it's baking is all that butter melts into the pie and the pocket that's left over is the flake.

It's half butter, half lard.

So you get the flakiness of the lard, but you get the flavor of the butter.

So it's the best of both worlds.

We sell it by the slice.

We sell whole pies.

We sell petite pies as well.

I never get tired of making pie.

I don't know a single person who doesn't have some sort of pie experience.

And being able to come in and buy a pie that's as good as you might remember it to be, is a really rare thing.

You know, I don't know what the key to success is.

I don't, but I have to admit, the longer I'm in business, I don't even really know what success is.

But I know that I love it, and I know that I am extremely proud of what we do.

And I love my employees, and I love the people that come in here.

And it seems to be that A La Mode is this institution that keeps getting more and more popular.

And I just, I can't get enough.

Love for the pie business may be an old tradition.

Most food historians say that pies originated in England, often meat pies.

Yet many of us in the U.S.

think pies are essentially all American, and it's a patriotic duty to stop when you see a pie stand like this one on route 302, in Bartlett, New Hampshire, Marilyn Cook calls herself the Pie Lady.

Yeah.

Lots of people stop.

I've got a really good following.

I've got a good local following, and then I've got so many tourists that come back every single year, 2 or 3 times a year.

Marilyn bakes her pies in her home nearby.

Well, her husband often mans the stand.

This is my grandmother's recipe and you have to use lard, okay?

Because back back then they didn't have refrigeration, so a lard thing like this could last 5 or 6 days without refrigeration.

You know, pies used to be made for breakfast.

Pies are a breakfast staple.

That's what they came over from England and Ireland as.

But once we got them over here, they became a dessert.

All right, well, it's an apples look, you can go on Macintosh Yeah, I get the apples someplace called Five Fields, in Bridgeton, Maine, Like, this is a Cortland.

and this is a Macintosh, and it's not a whole lot of difference in them.

You can't see the difference, but when you mix the two together, it's heaven.

One, you want.

Oh, I might have to buy a pie.

What I do with mine?

And I shouldn't tell you, but I will.

I coat the top of mine with, evaporated milk.

Okay?

That's what makes them brown up nicely.

And then you take a coarse sugar, and you sprinkle the sugar all over the top of the pie.

See how the sugar glistens.

And it's it's a really nice pie.

And it's a heavy pie that's thats a 5 pound pie.

I have one, one of the French Canadian, made with molasses pumpkin pies.

And then these are the apple pies.

So I go for an apple.

Okay, whichever one speaks your name, it's got my name on it.

Apples are my specialty.

They are pretty cool.

It's nice to be famous for something.

Yeah it is.

And if you find yourself in Indiana, the Hoosier State, you may find yourself looking for the famous official state pie, the sugar cream pie.

In Huntington, Indiana.

Mason Dravenstodt knows how to put together this regional favorite.

For a two pie recipe, we use four cups of whipping cream, and then I throw in a cup each of sugar, brown sugar, and flour, and then I throw in 2 to 3 tablespoons of vanilla extract.

And then a cup of milk.

Can't really go wrong with pie, I think.

It's not hard to make.

The sugar cream pie is just it's an amazing recipe.

The butter just keeping the pie light that is so simple and so easy that, you know, it's it's it's unbelievable that it can taste as good as it does.

That's Gene Ann Bailey, Mason's mother, who owns this little landmark restaurant called Nick's Kitchen.

Nowadays, it's mostly Mason's kitchen.

He came in and I taught him how to make pies.

And then he started teaching me.

Mom, this is the way you do it.

This way it tastes better.

He does a great job.

His pies are prettier than mine.

I have to tell you, I love the sugar cream pie.

I make the pie dough about once a week and that'll probably give us about 40 pies.

You take a bite and it's cream filled in your mouth, and the crust is homemade.

That's my favorite part.

We use homemade pie crust with Crisco and flour and water and, you know, just make it really good.

And then the sugar and how this is on top is crusted.

It's just a perfect mixture in your mouth.

I found you got to be sparing with this crust on top though.

If you do it it gets a little too thick.

People call it Hoosier pie.

People call it old fashioned cream pie.

People call it sugar pie.

We've always just called it sugar cream pie.

There's lots of different ways to make it.

You know, everybody has their own niche.

And in Indiana, people like this pie enough to go looking for variations.

Some can be picked up at newfangled roadside stands like the Rolling Pin Bakehouse near Roanoke, Indiana, operated by a pie baker named Natalie Warner.

I am a home base vendor, so I run a bakery from my home.

So same kitchen.

I used to make potato soup for my family.

I have a website that my husband created for me and so customers either order through the website or they call me with their order.

And then we set up a time and then I meet them out front of my house.

I've got a little table there, and I just meet them out in the driveway, and they get their goods and I get their money.

Which pie does she sell the most of?

Sugar cream.

Definitely sugar cream.

Who wants pie?

Everybody loves it.

And I have found out that not all other states have sugar cream pie and that it's very regional.

My husband's from Utah.

I guess the first time I had sugar cream pie, I was amazed at how sweet it was.

How good.

And his family had not heard of it.

And I was like, this is normal.

Like, we have this all the time in my house.

And, yeah, it's one of the things that I tell Natalie, this is one of the good things about meeting you is meeting sugar cream pie.

And the sugar cream pie is my mom's secret recipe.

And whenever she would take it places, we would always hear, oh, your mom's pie, your mom's pie, or we love that sugar cream pie.

Carlenes sugar cream pie.

So I knew that people liked that a lot.

Well, after about six months, because Natalie's new business was doing well, her mother, Carlene Staller, decided she might want to give this home based business thing a try, too.

She called and said, would you mind if I did the same thing you're doing with the pies?

And had a standout at my house, and I'd been kind of thinking in the back of my mind, I could do that.

If Natalie could do that, I can do that.

She's not really competition because we're about half an hour away from each other, and she's got a good location.

She has a better location than I do.

I'm out on this side County road.

For years, my my kids were telling me because my sugar cream pie in the family and friends, everybody loves it and has always, oh, you know, make that make that.

She called me with lots of questions about, well, what about does the health department let you do this?

Indiana changed their home based vendor laws about four years ago, I think, because up to that time, I would have had to have a whole separate kitchen and cooking facility.

You can't have anybody come into your home to get it.

You have to be outside of the home, at a roadside stand.

People laugh when I tell them like, no, I just meet them in my driveway.

Like, what It works.

I think it really makes people happy.

They get really excited when they get one of my pies.

So there are many regional flavors that may entice you.

New fruits to try.

In Whitefish, Montana, fans of the Huckleberry know about Loulas Cafe on second Street.

We are locals here, so Loulas is one of our favorite breakfast spots and definitely the pie.

The first thing you said when he walked in was, can we get a treat after breakfast?

So he was expecting the pie.

Its like the apples are perfectly crispy, so they're not like mushy.

Yes, we had breakfast earlier and came back for our pie.

Came back for a pie.

This is coconut cream pie with, huckleberry sauce.

I think it's the atmosphere too Its just welcoming and warm.

The place is owned and run by Mary Lou Covee, who you might assume is Loula.

My name is Mary Lou, and I used to have a partner named Laura, and we put those two names together to create a name for the restaurant.

We do a lot of breakfast and lunch.

We're kind of a that's kind of what we're known for is the breakfast and lunch.

The kitchen is run by chef Sean McCollum from Georgia, who happens to be Mary Lou's son in law.

The way I look at it, the pies have always been synonymous with what makes this place tick.

And I, I don't think that if we didn't have the pies that we wouldn't be nearly as successful.

These are ready to be served by the slice.

Or if somebody came and said, oh, can I take that whole thing home and say, you bet.

Nowadays, Mary Lou works often with Lindsay Shorter to assemble the pies.

Well, we make the pie crust first and we make them in big batches.

We make what?

Eat.

What did we decide?

About 30 to?

About two and a half.

Three dozen?

Yeah, at a time.

They have given up rolling pins for a machine called a sheeter that rolls out the crusts.

Oh my gosh, we couldn't do it with that.

When we started doing this, we were doing like we did it all hand roll and we only were doing like six pie crust a day.

That was a while ago.

They still roll the edges and crimp each pie by hand, and we actually then put those in the freezer to, to set up firm.

And then we get the fruit out and we mix it all together.

We with the, sugar and the thickener, we use, instant tapioca.

And then we use it's called clear gel and it's sort of a modified cornstarch.

This is a little bit dry.

I'm going to add just a little bit of water.

So I want those everything to mix be mixed in really well I like pie Yea you like pie?

You like huckleberry?

Yeah.

Well our biggest seller of course is huckleberries because that's the, the wild berry.

It's a northwest thing and they only grow wild.

They no one's been able to, like, cultivate them or propagate them.

And we buy as many as we can get our hands on because that's what we sell the most of.

You get into the backcountry, you're competing with bears for the huckleberries, so you kind of have to be careful of that.

And they freeze really well.

Then we usually mix those berries with like, raspberries.

Huckleberry peach is the favorite, the most popular.

She was explaining we've got several varieties of the huckleberry.

Huckleberry mixed berry.

This is a Huckleberry Raspberry.

Oh, this one is huckleberry peach.

And then this one here, is huckleberry cherry.

Oh, huckleberry peach!

That's one.

That's the one.

This is huckleberry cherry pie.

Both fruits I absolutely love.

And they're local.

We grow cherries here and we grow huckleberries here.

And it's kind of a mouthful of, northwestern Montana in a bite.

And then then we make kind of the normal apple pie, and then we also do cream pies, coconut cream, chocolate cream.

Another really popular one is the, key lime.

And then we put a huckleberry sauce over the top of that.

That's outstanding.

Honestly, this really is way to go.

Everything's better with Huckleberrys in it anyway, righ I think that's right.

Cream coconut.

My pie is better than yours.

Do you want to a bite?

Yeah.

Lets see.

So unique.

Just having a place that does everything from scratch anymore, So many restaurants, you know, will buy frozen or, you know, processed type food.

And it's just really unique that we take the time and effort to do it from step one all the way to the end.

And and that's what people keep returning for.

If you have to leave here, you may hope to end up in Minnesota, where pie maker, educator and storyteller Rose McGee may invite you to a party at her house in Golden Valley, just outside Minneapolis.

So we're going to start with this Minnesota star here.

People get a chance to come and have some pie.

And that's a good thing because it's summer and it's time to just bring people together a little bit.

There'll be a few people here.

The party is inside and outside.

And for her guests, Rose is making her specialty.

Sweet potato pies from scratch, Using a variety of sweet potatoes.

When I cook them, I always cut them in half because it helps them to cook faster and, the general rule of thumb is two potatoes make a pie.

Her guests, including food writer and advocate Sue Elickson, all love pies.

Not so many people know about sweet potato pie.

You think that if it's a vegetable, a sweet potato that you eat at Thanksgiving, but not in a pie.

And, once you taste them, you get hooked.

I see it as a lost art, the sweet potato pie.

And for me, the sweet potato pie is the sacred dessert of black culture.

And also southern southern cooking.

So southern people, no matter who they know what a sweet potato pie is, and they know what a good sweet potato pie is.

People from other backgrounds, like Nancy Musingasee, whose parents are from Africa, may be surprised.

So I absolutely hated Sweet Potato pie and I never tried it.

I was pretty resistant to it.

But I tasted Roses and I'm sold Absolutely love it.

Yummy yummy yummy.

Everybody having a good time?

We are.

It's all right.

How's the pie?

Okay, I gotta taste this myself.

As long as it meets the approval.

Sue Elicksons in the house.

All right.

Sue said its good.

I am the food critic.

Oh, I can't describe this.

I can tell you my experience, but I can't really tell you what it tastes like.

Somewhere along the line, I started wanting to eat the sweet potato pie because that's what I enjoy the most, that my grandmother used to make.

And I just, you know, started making them more.

And next thing I knew, I was selling them at Farmer's Market.

I have a grandson who, when he was like five years old, wanted to go.

I brought him a the sweet potato pie, and then he wanted to meet the lady that made them.

So I took him to the market one day and then forever after They wanted sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving.

So it is it's a tradition that many people have.

But then there's a lot of people that have never had it.

I like the stars.

Yeah, I do too.

I like the American theme with the state of Minnesota.

So I just do lots of cutouts.

Just to kind of perk the pie up a little bit.

One of the most succulent, like, desserts I've had ever.

And then just knowing her story kind of injects this new meaning into sweet potato pie.

So now I associate this dessert with something, really something with depth and then personality all encompassed and so on.

And then kind of manifested in this oh, oh no, she suprised it's it's rocking.

Its excellent.

Rockin Rose McGee also led us to the town of Braham, Minnesota where every year on the first Friday of August, they hold an event known as Braham Pie Day.

You know, the community comes together in a way that I wish we could just tell the world about it, and more people could do it.

The idea of everybody in town just sort of coming together around pie, it's not your everyday event, turning this many people out to a little town like Braham, Minnesota, is, is extraordinary.

We're about 75 miles from Minneapolis.

It's a nice little town.

Everybody knows everybody.

It represents this town.

And it's such a great thing.

And so many people come from all over the place to come here just for pie.

Pie capital of the world, Braham, Minnesota.

Braham is the homemade pie capital of Minnesota.

Ordained, declared sanctioned as such in 1990 by a former governor, Rudy Perpich.

And we celebrate that with, one day long pie festival where everything we can think about to do with pie, we do.

It's my third or fourth time here.

And I remember years ago just hearing about Pie Day, and I thought, pie day, how can you resist pie day?

While a big craft show sets up in the town park not far away, pie bakers of all ages are bringing their wares to the Braham Evangelical Lutheran Church Hall, where the judging will take place.

Thanks for participating.

It's a serious competition.

Most of the pies we have categories fresh fruit.

We have single crust, double crust children's which is 8 to 12, and we have apprentice, which is ages 13 to 17, and lifetime achievement, which is people 70 or older.

I brought peanut butter apple.

A chocolate cookie pie.

Awesome blueberry pie.

Once the entries are all registered and boxed and pictures have been taken of all the contestants with their pies in the nearby kitchen, four judges, including Rose McGee, have to decide which pies are best in each of the categories.

I'll be judging the children's division, which seems to be my specialty category.

We rate on the filling.

Does it ooze when it comes out?

Does it holds its shape?

The flavor.

Color of the pie crust.

Crispiness.

I'm looking for interesting fillings to see what people came up with.

That's the fun part, is to see what people have come up with that's different.

I'm eating rhubarb delight.

The judges cut a very small sliver out of each of the 50 some pies, because many of these entries will be auctioned off later in the festival tent in town.

Just enough so that you can get a taste.

A Blueberry almond.

This is a peach pie, peanut butter and jelly pie.

It tastes exactly like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Cheddar Apple pie.

The top crust might want to be done just a little bit more.

It looks like it might be a little bit soft there.

Oh, its lovely.

Crust is perfect.

This is this is our.

Unless something better comes up, there's our grand prize right there.

And the next pie.

Awesome.

Some very awesome blueberry.

It's delicious pie.

It's very good.

It's fantastic.

I want to take it home.

This is delicious.

The delicious scores are tallied.

Then the judges re-taste and negotiate the finalists and the grand champion.

Oh, that's your gorgeous key lime.

Oh, now that is key lime.

I hope everyone out there understands what a brutal job we have tasting all these pies.

What a pretty cut.

Finding grand champion.

It's really tough, isn't it Mary J. The race is tight, especially between the key lime and the cherry lattice.

It's hard to judge them because they're so different.

One is like a bold lime, and the other one's kind of like more about the subtle cherry when one has more skill, right?

The young people rock.

The young people in the top two.

Yes they do.

So that's fabulous.

That means that the Braham Pie Festival will continue.

So the Grand Champion Pie and many of the other winners are carefully loaded into the town's fire rescue truck or ambulance to be transported officially back to town.

The pies get there by the ambulance.

And your goal is to, you know, make the ambulance, because that way you don't have a pie that fell apart or that's non-edible.

And so even if you don't win, if you make the ambulance, you're still a winner.

Pies that are judged, they come back up here and they get sold.

At 3:00, It's time to auction off all the pies.

It's the old school of type auctions where you can.

Anybody can bid.

Just put your hand up.

Afterwards, you'll go over and settle up with my wife, Joanie, right there selling the pie.

And how many dollars?

200.

I'm going to go to maybe 200 or $100.

Some of the all of the winning pie makers get to parade their work through the crowd, hoping that someone would bid big 60,000,070, 70, 80.

How about 8191 and 100, 100 1300, 1280, 1300, 1312, 1300.

Sold out.

1215 Mary Larson.

She's on the phone with a bidder from California, I believe, or Texas.

Texas.

I want you want to talk to me, Gordon.

Yeah.

1250 yeah.

So not $12.50.

1250.

Oh, you thought that was cheap?

Okay, good.

Thank you, thank you.

Okay.

The category that is left is the Grand champion.

That means it's the best overall pie.

And we'll have, a comment or two about this best pie.

Okay, so we had another perfect score today on this pie.

It was a cherry pie was a cherry lattice top pie.

It was made by a youth from the apprentice class.

Laura Berglund from Shoreview.

Laura.

Oh, my.

Laura, come on up.

I've been baking pies for a really, really long time with my grandma.

I've been coming here since I was really little and to like, get this.

And I know, like all these bakers who've been baking for their whole lives and I just like I could probably count how many I have done on my own on, like, two hands, how many pies I've made on my own.

So it's really cool.

It's really exciting.

Yes, pie can be exciting.

It can lift a small town.

This community recognizes that pie is something that is family is traditional, and it just brings people together in a wholesome way.

Pie is something that you share, and so it brings people together because you just don't make pie for yourself that we're sitting down to eat pie.

But it's what's happening around the table when we're all eating pie.

I think that's part of it.

Pie may have unexpected consequences beyond the tasty in the summer here in Maine, family get togethers, outdoor parties.

Everybody wants pie.

It just seems to go so well with the celebration or the time of year.

But then you got to sit down.

It's not something you eat on the fly, it's something you savor.

And I think there's integrity to pie.

I just kind of speaks to that primal goodness.

If you are the baker of it, you get some real nice pats on the back for doing a nice job and that makes you want to do it again.

There's no reason to ever stop searching for luscious crusts and unusual or simply superb fillings.

And you know what?

It doesn't matter if you ever find the best.

There are so many that are so good, and if you eat this and don't like it, I'll give you the pie.

To visit a few more pie places and for a few recipes, go to pbs.org/food.

A Few Good Pie Places is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS A Few Good Pie Places was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

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