Season of pie
Katie Anderson
Michelle Statler of Spraggs has perfected pie production in her basement kitchen.
Katie Anderson
A pie crust sits in Michelle Statler’s kitchen in Spraggs.
courtesy of Michelle Statler
Michelle Statler baked these pies in her Spraggs kitchen.
Courtesy of Lisa Post
Lisa Post of Carmichaels baked this dairy-free pumpkin pie.
In a county that prides itself on “country living,” homemade pie is one of life’s essential pleasures – especially during the holiday season.
From the pumpkin, apple and berry classics to fan favorites like rhubarb, butterscotch and coconut cream, Michelle Statler, of Spraggs, has perfected pie production in her basement kitchen where she has been baking for years.
“I love that you have an end product when you bake,” she said. “I don’t look at it as work.”
She started baking with her grandmother at five years old. Then, she and her mother, Martha Statler, started baking together.
“Our plan was to open a bakery together, but in 2006 she got sick with cancer,” Statler said.
Martha died in 2015.
Although baking isn’t was Statler does for a living – she works in marketing at J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va. – it’s her life’s passion. She has a dream of turning an old farmhouse on her 140-acre property into a bakery.
She’s made 60-plus pies in one day, using lots of flour and three ovens to bake 11 pies at once. She sells them at two Mt. Morris festivals, the Ramp Festival in April and Frontier Festival in August. Last year, she sold 88 pies at one festival.
“I get into a system,” Statler said about baking festival pies. “I usually have my music on, and I do one kind at a time.”
She’s got it down to a science, with two large freezers packed with pre-rolled crusts, bags of fruit and other ingredients. She even picks her own apples from trees on her property to make apple pie and knows where to buy flour, Crisco and frozen berries in bulk.
“The trick to a flakey pie crust is to not mess with the dough so much,” Statler said.
Her favorite is a chocolate cream pie, but she mostly sells fruit pies at the festivals. She also bakes for family holiday gatherings, but not always pie. Her family, she said, prefers pumpkin rolls, sugar cookies, Oreo balls, cheesecake and fudge.
Lately, Statler has received requests for healthier, sugar or gluten-free, baked goods for people with dietary restrictions. She’s experimented with chocolate and peanut butter cookies and banana nut bread.
Finding other options for gluten, sugar or dairy products isn’t always easy when it comes to baking. It took Lisa Post, of Carmichaels, eight years to find a dairy-free pumpkin pie recipe that she likes.
Her 10-year-old son, Anthony, is allergic to dairy, but she didn’t want him to miss out on a classic holiday tradition like pumpkin pie.
“I’m more of a cook than a baker, but I started baking because my son couldn’t have things just bought from the store,” she said. “There are people out there with allergies, and it can be difficult to find a good recipe.”
For years, she tried making several different dairy-free versions of pumpkin pie, including one recipe that called for tofu instead of milk. Some of them, she had to throw away.
“I thought the tofu one was disgusting,” she said. “I did not care for it at all.”
Post said finally found one recipe that uses vanilla almond milk creamer that “people seem to love.”