Just waking up this morning and overjoyed by our big award yesterday. Much thanks to everyone that has been sending in their support and love. Here's a little report on how yesterday went for us.

Got to bed close to 1am the previous night as we had a late start time to bake off, and the pies had to cool thoroughly in order to keep the structural integrity as we brought them up to our room. Luckily we were able to borrow a pastry tower with wheels and kept it our room overnight. Lot's of hotel night owls were very inquisitive as to why we had a tower of pies. We started off the day with waking up at 6am to prepare our pies. The pies were looking pretty good, but not incredible at the same time. Some of the strawberry-rhubarb looked as it needed a few more minutes in the oven, and most of the pumpkin had cracks in the center. To refresh people's memory, we had to bring 4 of each type of pie, 1 for display (not being judged), 1 for the judges to look at and taste, and 2 backup pies in case some didn't turn out so beautiful. Well, we're really glad we had those backup pies as there were quite a few that didn't look as great as we would have liked them too!

We headed our tower of pies downstairs to the judging room, which was giant! Baker's Square was checking in their pies, think they entered over a 100 different types of pie total, lot's of crazy looking cream pies, some looked too pretty to eat. We had quickly found our friends from the Achatz Bakery in Michigan, we "oooed" and "awwwwed" at each others pies for awhile. We brought down a slightly broken pecan pie to let our friends snack on while we waited to be checked in. They make a sugar-free apple pie that is sweetened only with apple juice that looked and sounded divine, was rooting for them to win in the sugar-free category (and I was thinking about you Mom).




Linda Hundt (Last year's big winner in the best-in-show category for the professional bakers) and her crew brought in their pies and added some last minute pie bling, shaking some edible glitter over the roof tops of their entries. (Check out the action shot).



After the registration, Scot and I had our biggest break in time since we've been in Florida. We decided to check out the local cuisine, tracked down an authentic and well run cuban sandwich spot called the Black Bean Deli. Won't carry on about this too much since it's not pie-realted, but know that their food was incredible, and there is alot of love that goes into their slow cooked and well prepared food. If you are ever near the Orlando area, we highly recommend this establishment.



Back at the festival things were starting to heat up. Over 900 different pies were displayed in the "War Room" (a term that was phrased by head coordinator and all around great lady, Linda Hoskins). Scot and I arrived early to get some good pictures of the place, and besides, our food coma lunch was beginning to wear off and we wanted to be first in line at the appetizer table.



We meet a few new artisan pie baker's, some that had us sweating pretty good as their pies were in our division and looked incredible! Michele's Pies out of Connecticut really impressed us, and not just with their many years of award winning pies, but also their down-home feel with a good attitude and abundance of character. They got their start in farmers market just like us, and they blew up over the course of several short years. They source locally produced fruit and pumpkin to make their sumptuous looking pies.

The awards ceremony announcement was made and the large group of pie people gathered closely to the podium. Apparently in previous years the announcement of winners took quite awhile so the APC (American Pie Council) made with a quicker ceremony. Beckmann's Bakery was the third winner to be called and it was so surreal. Our pumpkin pie reigned supreme and we were in a state of shock. We had so much support and congratulations coming from a slew of pie people that come from all over the country. This is a competition, but a very friendly one and we couldn't be happier to have meet some of these great humans.






Today we're off to be judges in the amateur and professional category. Not sure if they're going to let me take photos of the pies, I'm gonna try though. Hopefully our stomachs are up for the challenge of sampling up to 60 pies!

Thanks again to all of our fan's out there, we love you!

-Tony the Pie Dude

Wow!

Alot to report in the morning, but for now, we give you this......


......pumpkin pie, nuff said.

Pie Day #1 complete

Whew, what a doozy this first day has been. Today was the pie conference, where industry professionals and supplies came together for a hefty day of pie talks and a wimpy day of pie eating (the real eatin' starts saturday for us). Scot and I had to do quite a bit of educating about olallieberries and their point of origin. Lot's of people seem to be excited to try out "exotic" California pie, I just wish we had more to give away rather than what we've brought for the judging. There's always next year.

Spent a good amount of time talking over some production issues we had various people. We had great chat with Wendy Achatz, co-owner/founder of Achatz Pies. She has an amazing sustainability-through-pie story that was really inspiring to hear about. She has 7 pie shops in Michigan, and thats right, they only sell pie! Not too common in the bay area, come to think about it I can't think of one bakery/cafe that I've been to that all they bake is pie! Have you? Wendy was buying so many delicious Michigan apples from a local farmer, the farmer convinced Wendy to buy the farm! She then learn the art of farming and supplied all the apples for her pies. Business grew and grew, and soon the apple farm couldn't produce enough to fill demand. She had to leave the farm to keep with the strenious pie growth (thats right, I said pie growth). We loved meeting Wendy and hope to try her delicious sounding pies this weekend at the Pie Festival. Check out her site at...

http://achatzpies.com/

The conference ended around 2pm, Scot and I were to head over to the Celebration High School to bake off our 20 pies. We arrived at what seemed like a white-collar prison, really modern building with high fences surrounding it. The front office had no idea who we were or anything about people baking pies in their kitchen. Oh boy! A little nervous, we hit the phones and tried to figure out the situation. Turned out that the office people were extremely friendly and helpful, and the cafeteria is run by a separate entity and sometimes the lines of communication break down. We got on the phone with our contact and chief-in-staff at the APC (American Pie Council), Linda Hoskins. Linda confirmed that we were in the right place, and we had to track down someone....and....and........yeah, it just didn't work out. The person was gone for the day and we couldn't use their facilities. Big bummer, but Linda was able to work out some oven time at our hotel for the latter part of the evening.

Thats pretty much where we are coming from right now. We ended up baking right next a lovely woman named Shannon out of Texas, Pie-O-Neer for Just Pie LLC. Had a lovely time baking next to her, and she made us glad that we weren't putting out apple pie in the competition. Her cranberry-apple pie looked and smelled divine, complete with a cutout of state of Texas and everything. Check her out at www.justpieonline.com/

The kitchen at this hotel is crazy! Dozens of people running around with a sense of purpose and determination, without missing a chance to smile at your or nod in your direction. The surreal part was that we were down there for hours using their massive oven, and not one person asked what we were doing or asked if we any credentials etc.....nothing, zero, zilch, nuthin. Giant trays of cold cuts and salads whizzed out of that kitchen so fast, it was great eye candy while waiting for the pies to bake.

Scot is at the moment babysitting the pies on the cooling racks so nobody takes 'em. I just got the text that it's time to relocate them to the high security pie vault aka our hotel room. Thats all for now, more tomorrow! Our pie judging happens in the morning, keep your fingers crossed for us.

-T

Welcome to Florida

Scot and I arrived late last night in the Orlando airport. It took quite awhile before we got our rental car as I forgot which company we booked it from and my phone had temporarily crashed. Luckily my wife was next to a computer at home and gave us some ground support. After a long line which seemed like every other customer had a special request that took them twice as long as they should have, we settled into a nice Toyota Rav4. Definitely a good amount of space for our giant cooler full of pies.

For those that have been wondering, the pies arrived in perfect shape! We brought over 20 pies to compete with, and only 5 flavors. We need to submit two pies, one for display and the other for the judges to eat. We also need to have two backup of each flavor just in case a problem happens when baking them off. So yeah, 5x4 equals 20 pies! We are competing with what "we" think are the best pies; ollalieberry, strawberry-ollalieberry, strawberry-rhubarb, pumpkin, and pecan. The cooler we brought on the plane just barely passed regulation. The weight was a little over so we took out the aluminum foil and pie buttons.

Thats all for now, we're heading off to the pie conference, where there will be a speech by the president of the American Baker's Association. This afternoon we head off to a local high school where we will bake off the pies! We submit them tomorrow morning at 6am for judging, hopefully the jet lag won't prevent us from waking up:)

We will have more to report and photos later this evening.

Tony Stumbaugh
Pie Dude
Beckmann's Bakery

p.s. In case you were wondering, the above photo is the power lines outside of Disney World. Pretty surreal to see how ingrained into the local community it is to involve having their logo be used to support power lines.