Humble pie. How often we've heard that expression. Do you ever wonder what it means? “He is eating humble pie,” is sometimes said of a person who is suffering in disgrace, and is now reaping the results of his actions. The term, humble pie, is also sometimes used to describe a dessert or entrée of plain and ordinary food.
I almost named this book “Humble Pie”. But I say this to you: Pie is anything but humble. I prefer the term I coined myself: Designer Pie.
This manual is written for those who will make Designer Pie. Designer Pie is a delicious and glorious concoction of wholesome ingredients assembled and baked into satisfying desserts and main dishes. Pie that will make your customer's eyes light up and their mouths water.
Designer Pies are not factory-made pies. They don't come in a box from the freezer truck. You don't thaw them, bake them off, and place them in your lighted display in an effort to insinuate to your customers that you've baked them yourself. Designer Pie is made from fresh, wholesome, ingredients. By you.
They are not hard to make.
This book will arm you with information to make wonderful and easy Designer Pie, and also provide you with details to outfit your own “Designer Pie Shop,” at attractive starting and operating costs, and easily operated by just two persons. (Hire one or two employees if you feel the need, after you're up and running, and when you discover that your customers have consummed your morning's work in the blink of an eye.)
I came to the business of pies because of life's circumstances. I wasn't educated at a prestegious chef's institution. I learned about life and business flying by the seat of my pants and the sweat of my brow.
My family came to me early in my life. I longed to be educated for an important career, but I had to solve the problems of surviving on a limited income, to take advantage of any available avenue to become independent in the midst of raising a large family, and, at the same time, operate in business together with them.
Our famiy, that is to say, husband and children, some of his, some of mine, and ours, at different ages, at different times, worked in the hospitality business. At one point we opted out of that world and bought a bakery in a very small town.
The three children still at home worked along side of my husband and I, getting up before dawn six days a week, performing their jobs in the bakery, and on school days, returned home to prepare for their school day.
The bakery wasn't where I wanted to be. I still wanted a career. So I sold real estate on the side.
I returned home after the children were at school, showered, hurried back to the bakery, hung up my “gold jacket”, and worked the counter, while simultainously decorating birthday cakes in the back.
When I had an appointment I donned my gold jacket and set out, returning afterward to finish the work still waiting for me there.
We hired one young woman to work at the counter part-time, so my husband could nap on the stacks of flour sacks in the storage room, raising every so often to take racks of bread and rolls from the steam room and put them on the shelves of the rotating deck oven to bake.
To tempt the townsfolk, he timed some of his baking to coincide with mealtimes, turned on the exhaust fans, forcing the fragrent fumes out into the street.
Our family knew how to work hard. We made such a success of that bakery that my husband fell ill from too much work. It was the one lucky break in that entire exhausting experience. He couldn't work for months and we lost the business. Soon after he recovered, we returned to the hospitality business, operating small to medium properties during renovation, outfitting and opening new properties, moving from place to place, dragging our unwilling children along with us.
We always hired on as a team. My husband was always General Manager, and I was always his Second Banana. I think maybe that it's appropriate to think of it that way, since I was always the Food Director.
I developed a strategy. Menus first. The menus dictated equipment, small wares, and kitchen layout. Because I developed my menus first, always breakfast, lunch and dinner, I avoided over ambitious purchases and saved our employers a great deal of money, and everything fell naturally into place.
We eventually settled outside of Kansas City, Missouri, operated a small motel and busy restaurant for several years, then leased the restaurant ourselves.
It was then I developed my pie business, providing desserts to the restaurant. I named my little business “The Pie Lady”, and operated it alone. I knew exactly what equipment I needed to operate this little business. It wasn't much. I bought the essential equipment and baked my pies off-site and sold them to the restaurant.
I developed short cuts, found a way to reduce the sugar content in fruit pies while improving flavor, and bought a fancy expensive pie press to make easy work of the pie crusts.
It was not unusual for me to bake fifty to sixty pies, by myself, in a four hour morning session.
In my free time . . . yes, I now had free time. I tested recipes. I changed a few things here and there, and eventually amassed a fine collection of recipes for pies, crusts and toppings.
The results of my hard work is in this handy manual . . . with enough information to prepare yourself to open your own Designer Pie Shop.
This manual will help you to avoid overspending and overworking, because just two people can operate this shop, working a normal day.
It is not the aim of this book to show you how to include soups, salads, and/or sandwiches to your menu. Those subjects will be addressed in upcoming books. It is the sole aim in this book to show you how to set up a stand-alone Designer Pies.
I can hardly wait to see what new things you come up with as you add your own delicious recipes to the ones I offer you in this manual.
But now we have work to do. Let's begin.
Designer Pies is now available at lulu.com search for 2294360 in books
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