Brian Fletcher, Ferguson's Mayor, and Farzad Faramarzi, owner of the Thyme Table restaurant, take a close look at the best and last pie entered into the Ferguson Farmer's Market pie contest.

(FIELDER WILLIAMS STRAIN/P-D)

Sweet memories flavor pie-baking contests

By Nancy Cambria

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

07/03/2006

Under a small tent in a parking lot where the old Ferguson bus line used to end, the legacy of Stefannie Wheat's grandmother arrives at the judging tent: a chocolate meringue pie inside an aluminum-domed pie case.

"These are my grandmother's recipes," she said. "The chocolate meringue is my grandmother's favorite." She also baked a coconut cream.

And then comes the sugary memory of Sister Gabriella Rogenski's long-departed mother: an apricot pie protected under a thin film of wrinkled wax paper.

"I used to watch my mother bake," Rogenski said, before gently peeling back a tiny corner of the paper to reveal a braided crust delicately crisscrossing a choppy sea of vivid orange filling. "She measured everything in her hands. She just had a feel for doing pies." Advertisement

Rogenski and the 10 other contestants can't exactly say what drove them to bake past midnight and before sunrise to enter the Ferguson Farmer's Market first-ever pie contest on Saturday.

Although the winner would come away with $100, it really wasn't the money that pushed Rogenski to travel with a friend from Madison to enter. Nor was it the thought of winning that pressed Heidi Lung to forgo a wedding anniversary date with her husband and bake three different pies.

No, it was something greater than the gooey mixtures of fruit and sugar and zest and the hand-rolled crusts.

"Pies are like quilts," said Rogenski shyly, as she watched passers-by stop at the table, bend slowly forward and inspect each pie like an old photograph. "We know a lot of people who quilt to remember an ancestor, and I think pies are in the same family."

No bad memories

Pie contests always have been a mainstay of home economics competitions in state and county fairs. But thanks to farmers markets and downtown business associations, there's been a resurgence of contests in area suburban towns where subdivisions grow as fast as crabgrass out of former crop fields.

Jane Eckert, a descendant of the Eckert's orchards family dynasty based in Belleville, said the public is yearning for ways to connect with simpler times and the farms that were a part of our ancestry.

"There's usually a story that comes with each pie entry," she said. "There's something about recipes that stay in the family that's very important, and people want to share them."

Though she has no hard evidence, Linda Hoskins, the Illinois-based executive director of the American Pie Council, suspects that modern-day America's rekindled love affair with pie-making has a lot to do with the rise of cable TV's Food Network. She said a decade ago, pie-making appeared in decline as women traded the kitchen for work and supermarkets stocked freezers and shelves with manufactured pies created in an industry generating more than half a billion dollars a year.

Hoskins thinks there is also a more tart and melancholy reason behind the rise of homemade pies and contests. As families and friends gather today to celebrate the country's founding, she believes America is still collectively recovering from the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

"I don't think there are any bad memories associated with pie," she said.

'Changed my life'

If Ferguson's pie contestants were to have a role model, it would be Sharon Baizer Winstein of Olivette. In January 1998, she packed her prized 10-inch Pyrex plate and her dime-store copper-plated measuring spoons into a suitcase and flew to Denver to compete in the National Pie Competition. Battling high altitude and an unfamiliar oven, she baked an apple pie that won top honors and launched her career as a cookbook writer.

"It really changed my life," she said from inside her suburban kitchen that looks nothing like the farmhouses of her Iowa and Nebraska ancestors. It was filled with the nostalgic aroma of a plump blueberry pie filled with berries picked fresh in Perryville, Mo.

Earlier, she had assembled the pie by first pressing out chilled dough with her Russian grandfather's 100-year-old tapered rolling pin on a flowered pillowcase.

"This is my magic pin," she said, holding it firmly between her two hands. "I can do no wrong with this. It's just heaven."

Before putting the pie into the oven, she slit the top crust with a single line and dappled it with gentle fork pricks.

"You might say this is my signature."

Baizer Winstein no longer competes in pie contests. But she can't stop talking about how baking pies links her to her ancestors, and her grandchildren - and even strangers.

Once she got up before dawn to bake an apple pie to bring to her daughter and her husband in Washington, D.C. Before heading to the airport, she found a cardboard box and insulated the bottom with newspaper to cradle the warm pie through the flight.

"I go down the aisle of the plane with this big box in my arms and the people are all staring because the smell is so great," she recalls giddily. "The flight attendant made a place in the luggage compartment and padded it with blankets and pillows. Every time the flight attendants came down the aisle, they would smile. Then the co-pilot passed by. He smiled at me, too. And then he winked."

Hot competition

Minutes before the judging was set to start at the Ferguson Farmer's Market, the competition grew sweeter and sweeter: Coconut cream, chocolate cream, blackberry, rhubarb, shoofly, derby, cherry and peach arrived for inspection at the judging table.

The four male judges, led by Mayor Brian Fletcher, began by delicately sampling a wedge from the first of 16 pies. By pie No. 8, the four resorted to digging in with their own pocket knives and serving up slices of crust and goo. They drew long gulps of water from bottles between bites and wiped back the sweat from what would turn into a nearly 100-degree day.

An audience formed on the two nearby picnic tables, and the contestants admitted they were feeling nervous. Some snapped pictures when the judges evaluated their pies.

"I never thought I'd feel this way," giggled Kait Bauer, who had both an apple and peach entry up for consideration.

The judges remained mostly stone-faced. And when the last pie arrived - Dorothy Seiter's farmer's market peach - the judges look relieved.

It's a dead heat between Wheat's coconut cream and Seiter's peach, and the final choice comes down to a gut reaction.

"Peach," Fletcher said.

"Peach," two of the other judges said.

"We have a winner!" Fletcher shouted.