Listen to me: good fat makes good pie crust.

Books like The Pie & Pastry Bible, Cookwise, and others make a big fuss about technique. Freeze the butter, freeze half the butter, use only butter, use butter and shortening, roll it into shards, cut it into cubes, chill the dough, chill it again, on and on and on, til anyone would be convinced that you need an advanced degree from Pie Crust U to turn out anything worth eating.

But you know what you really need? Your two hands, some flour, a little salt, butter, and lard.

Yes, lard. Good lard, which is to say, rendered leaf lard made from happy pigs who spent their lives outside doing happy piggy things. In New York City, I used lard from Flying Pig Farm in the Berkshires. Here, I get my tub o' lard from Range Brothers, the pig-farming arm of Prather Ranch. It's creamy-white and waxy, with a faint but unmistakeably meaty-rich aroma, something like really good drippings. For baking, it's important to look for leaf lard, the very pure fat from around the kidneys, since it's denser and firmer and less strongly flavored than fat from the rest of the animal. Sloshy, slushy lard from other parts may make fabulous tamales, but leaf lard is for baking.

What I like best is a mix of butter (for tenderness and flavor) and lard (for suppleness and texture). I wouldn't use lard for everything, although you probably could. For creamy custard fillings, or delicate fruits high in sugar and acid (like peaches, plums, and cherries) I'd probably stick with a lighter, more crumbly all-butter crust. But for more mellow fillings--apples, pears, pumpkin, pecan--as well for savory chicken or meat pies, lard n' butter works like a dream.

Why? Three words: texture, texture, texture. Lard gives a silky flakiness more like a croissant than your usual crust. The meatiness disappears and all that's left are beautiful golden-brown shards breaking up under your eager fork. If you think crust is just there to hold up the filling, this will change your mind.

Obviously, I have strong feelings about this issue. So why not them to the test and see how my pie stacked up against the competition at the annual apple-pie contest held at the charmingly local Sebastopol Gravenstein Apple Fair. This annual August event is a fund-raiser for the excellent Sonoma Farm Trails program, as well as an all-around celebration of the Gravenstein apple, Sonoma rural know-how (from beekeeping to sheep husbandry), and middle-aged guys in Hawaiian shirts jamming loud bar blues, all under the spreading oaks of Ragle Ranch Park. (The Fair continues Sunday, Aug 16, from 10am to 5pm.)

Now, full disclosure: back in 2001, a pie of mine won the Grand Championship prize in this very contest. I entered again last year, though, and didn't even make it into the top three. The pie world: a fickle place!

One of the perks of winning in 2001 was returning as a judge the following year. Which meant I saw, and tasted, all the things that can go wrong: proud, beautifully formed crusts burnt chocolate brown; pale, pallid crusts that shouted "I'm made with Crisco!"; underbaked apples chalky with starch alternated with fillings flavored with weird things like lime zest and nutmeg. As Fran Lebowitz wrote in Metropolitan Life,

People have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first person to think of putting fresh lime juice in scalloped potatoes, try to imagine that there must be a reason for this.

So I made a plain old pie, only with lard and with Pink Pearl apples, my favorite heirloom because not only are they tart and snappy, they're Barbie pink. Except that you wouldn't know it, because their skin is pale and creamy, nothing special, until you cut inside and wham! Fuschia!

The pie I made was pretty in pink and the crust divine, but all for naught: after hanging out at the fair for 2 hours, checking out the goat-milking demonstration and the 1940s tractors, sampling the multiple apple pie/cobbler/fritter stands, admiring the many face-painted children and their mom-jean-wearing moms and/or tattooed dads all happily gnawing on enormous barbecued Willie Bird turkey legs, the announcement was made, and my pie was not among those honored.

Oh, well. It might be a loser, but it's a beautiful one, at least. For pie, the best is always Mom's, and how can a contestant know what kind of pie the judges came home to on a sunny afternoon?

Life is short, though. Bake pie for the people who need pie, and don't worry about the ribbons.

Unsurprisingly, the best pie scene in 20th century literature belongs to Roald Dahl, who wrote as vividly about food as he wrote about crummy parents, child-eating giants, sadistic schoolmarms, and the bright, plucky kids who best them. In Danny, The Champion of the World, a kindly small-town doctor pays a house call on Danny's dad, leaving Danny, who hasn't eaten in 24 hours, with "something huge and round wrapped up in greaseproof paper":

"Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the greaseproof paper from around the doctor's present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with a rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought. And God bless Mrs. Spencer as well."

For some reason, this description of the pie Danny eats, alone in the tiny caravan he shares with his wounded and temporarily immobile father, has stayed with me more than any of the book's many memorable passages. Dahl relished trafficking in warped food fantasies imaginative children might gleefully dream up and later, as adults, wiser and, by Dahl's subversive standards, probably much less fun, still enjoy: The BFG's flatulent frobscottle, the grotesque chocolate cake-scarfing sequence in Matilda, and pretty much all of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Yet this pie, by Dahl's standards, a straightforward, entirely believable concoction, occupies a special corner of memory. The pie is a simple, hearty dish, prepared by the sympathetic doctor's wife for a hungry boy who has no one to make him pies. Danny's mother is dead, and his father broke his leg trying to steal pheasants from a villainous beer tycoon. The boy deserves a pie, and Dahl makes sure he gets one -- because pies are the sort of thing bright, plucky children shouldn't have to do without.

The scene is moving, sure -- especially when you're in 3rd grade -- but the pie in question also sounds pretty good: grand, nourishing, and fanciful -- the way a pie should.

When I contemplate "pie", my mind races back centuries, through whirlwinds of sweet, stewed fillings and pressed pastry, past a light-speed procession of empty window-sills, chanted nursery rhymes, and county fairs, all the way back to Medieval Europe. I imagine great, honking, burnished-brown mountains of pastry hugging undisclosed fillings in broad, round pans, steam spitting through slits carved into the surface. Outside the crusts, cheery plump pie-people in tunics sit around a long table in a great hall. Someone drags forth an over-sized knife to carve slices, to see what lurks within -- maybe spiced plums, an array of berries, or some assemblage of juicy meat parts trapped between layers of dough, suspended in sauce like succulent specimens in amber, with perhaps a slender bird leg or two poking cautiously from the top crust. Even if you know what kind of pie you're about to inhale, the pleasant prospect of unearthing delicious hidden mysteries -- like the hard-boiled eggs in Danny's pie -- inevitably accompanies the pie form. Only when you actually crack into a pie, can you truly solve the mystery within. Pies are also a little funny, and not only because they're the target of a South Park character's unwavering obsession. I didn't know how funny pie could be until, at the age of twelve, I went to England with my family and watched, from a window seat on a Dover-bound train, a hulking, squinty-eyed English lad flail at his pencil-thin younger brother in the aisle, braying again and again: "Edward, quit hogging all the pie!"

Yes, pie provokes passion, more so than most desserts, but it's not popular just because it's evocative of anything; it's popular because it's good. Aron Kay should have picked a lamer food to start hurling into the faces of famous people with offensive political platforms and/or excessively high opinions of themselves -- like runny porridge or gas station tamales. The formula for pie is deceptively uncomplicated and unassailable in its dazzling simplicity, really as close to perfect as it gets. Every great pie, regardless of provenance, hinges on interplay between its two components, crust and filling: in a classic American fruit pie, the salty, butter-rich crust balances and adds complexity to a sweet filling; in Tunisian brik, a brittle stack of crunchy phyllo-like pastry provides a bland, texturally interesting foil to the heady, moist mixture of tuna, egg, onions, and capers stuffed inside.

I'm not going to pretend I'm a pie expert, a true aficionado. I adore pie primarily in theory; I do not bake it myself, nor do I frequently purchase it from bakeries and diners. I like the much-litigated Derby pie, in no small part because we're pretty much from the same place. The Bay Area is obviously home to some good pie too. Even though I usually head there with other things in mind (namely, artichoke soup and great fish) I've always championed Pescadero's Duarte's Tavern for its sublime pie made with local olallieberries, the tart product of a berry soap opera.

You probably read about Pie Truck on Urban Daddy last week. With the latest local food renaissance happening on wheels, roving carts and underground delivery services get more tweets than Shaquille O' Neal, and blogs put new-comers on blast within days of their first sale. We may be approaching gastronomic Thunderdome, a new quasi-post-apocalyptic condition of eating through recession, where restaurants, having struggled, gradually shutter and practically disappear altogether, surrendering the pitted scene to scrappy, subsistence-level free-agents -- wagon-pushers and van vendors -- with no regard for increasingly irrelevant health code regulations, much less entrepreneurial convention.

Pie Truck is one of the latest freelance foodie endeavors to garner city-wide attention and, as it turns out, it's a lovely, deserving operation. I hollered at Pie Truck proprietor Chris Bauer on Wednesday of last week. Chris is a former architect, brother to Matt Bauer, the fantastic banjo-slinging singer-songwriter who once called San Francisco home. I asked Chris if he'd deliver to the Richmond, where I'd be house-and-dog-sitting for my dad all week. He said he could. To make my regular Saturday morning pick-up basketball game, I'd have to be away from the house during his normal delivery hours. I said I'd slip the money under the mat if he'd leave the pies. That would be fine, he said.

On Saturday, I made it back to the house -- sweaty, exhausted, and famished -- at around 11:15 a.m. No pie, I thought, staring at the steps leading up to the door. My little wad of bills still peeked out from under the mat. I watched the news and drank some juice. Noon approached. Did he forget, I wondered, checking the street through the window. I kept checking every few minutes. I chased the dog around the house to distract myself. He's totally not coming, I thought as another 30 minutes passed. I watched more television. I changed the channel several hundred times. I checked the street again. I looked at the clock and shook my head, despondent. The elusive pie-man was surely a no-show. He was a faker, not a baker. He was so underground, so sneaky, so profoundly and diabolically aligned with the inherent mystery of his chosen product that he did not deliver anything at all. That was, in fact, his whole deal, I thought, becoming a little angry as I contemplated cooking up a new blog topic on shortish notice. My oxygen-deprived brain throbbing from the effort such irrational pondering required, I hit the showers. As I emerged from the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of a man's head bobbing very briefly through the frame of the front window. I climbed into clothes as fast as I could and raced to the door. Two boxes, one small and white, the other large and pink, sat on the doorstep. The money was gone. My pies were here. I dashed down the stairs and scanned the street. There was not a truck or a pie-man in sight. He'd come after all -- and left as swiftly as he'd arrived.

Ten minutes later, I sat down to a lunch of oven-warmed pie. The 5" chicken pot pie was drier on the inside than I'd expected, intense and savory, not creamy, the slightly peppery, golden strings of chicken spun around celery, peas, and carrots beneath the puffy dome of crust.

I ate half and moved on. The 10" apple pie was truly excellent. I ate two wedges, just like Danny, and surrendered. The apple filling tasted like mulled cider, deep and warm, just sweet enough; the crust was thick, slightly doughy yet delicious -- a most happy ending to a short pie story I feared would never come full circle.

A few years ago I met a fellow who talked some very big words about pie. He seemed to think he knew a lot. He said he had this friend, Aligator, who organized a pie competition every year, and, if I was lucky, I might get to attend.

Through veils of secrecy and language written to intimidate even the most scholarly, Pie Off was turning out to be something to be reckoned with. People who came just to watch and snack and spy were turned away. Gorgeous, fruit-laden pretties were disqualified for blatant disregard for the rules, and stories were told about past year rule breakers, who were, conspicuously, missing from the day’s event.

Pie Off was going to be a serious affair.

Weeks before the date, emails came from an undisclosed location. There was an argument about whether I would be allowed to make a pie. Ransom notes for the precious Pie Off Trophy were hung in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. Christo* was hired to wrap the secret location. More emails came.

I was asked to be a Pielebrity. Star-struck like a fan in line all night I said yes, having absolutely no idea what I just said yes to.

Pie Off Rules were challenged. An interloper threatened meat pie and the Committee issued a warning.

“Dear Bakers,

As you have no doubt heard, the Pie Off Steering Committee and International Sisterhood/ Brotherhood/ Sockpuppethood of Pie Bakers, Iron Ship Builders and Boilermakers, PIE-TCB have been embroiled in a summer-long dispute over banned substances appearing in award-winning filling throughout the ten-year lifespan of Pie Off, Pie Off East, and all related Pie Off events.

I am happy to report that these disputes and allegations have been resolved in their entirety, and thankfully without much media fanfare. And while I am not at liberty to discuss any settlement terms or amounts, suffice it to say that you will most likely see the value of gourds, tomatoes, and lamb suffer a rather steep decline in the coming months.”

A baker’s dozen of questions about filling categories were raised and answered,

“the combo rule is one of preponderance. bakers/teams are allowed to enter combo pies. the choice of category should be based on whichever fruit is the preponderant ingredient in the filling. if different fruits share equal representation in the filling, then bakers/teams are allowed to make a game-time decision, submitting their pie into one of the appropriate categories.”

The date approached. An invite arrived on Facebook. The location stayed covered. I asked the Committee if I could talk about Pie Off on Eggbeater. A firewall protected email exchange took place. I could tell about the event but give no details about where exactly pies would be dropped off and judged.

The exact response to my question was this:
“In general, the committee does not mind, and perhaps even supports, online discussion of Pie Off, Pie Off International and Pie Off, The Movie. We would only ask that any blog mention of this Sunday's event does not amount to an open invitation. This "eggbeater" village intimidates us more than a little, quite frankly; and our humble gathering wishes only to craft pie with the tools and notions that our mamas gave us.

In short, the answer is yes.
you dig?”

The clincher? No spectators. You had to bring a pie to get in the door. But you could bake a pie with one other person.

One would think with so many rules, regulations and verbiage, one might feel constrained. But many pies came, were eaten, judged and enjoyed. In fact, before pies were eaten, someone set up a serious pot of oil in a back yard and made whole fried pie snackettes.

In total 38 pies were made in 5 categories.
1. stone fruit (peach, nectarine, cherry, plum, apricot)
2. Tree fruit (apple, pear)
3. berry (strawberry, blueberry, cranberry)
4. Caneberry (raspberry, blackberry, boysenberry, marionberry)
5. citrus/tropical (lemon, key lime, banana, mango, etc.)

My Pielebrity status translated into being the overall judge and I, along with another pie discerning individual, chose 1st, 2nd & 3rd place after judges picked a #1 pie in each of their categories. Pie bakers could also cast a Baker’s Choice ballot and a fellow who had never, in all of his life, made a pie before, won with basil-blackberry.

At the end of the day, after tasting 38 pies, I had a better understanding of just how awful bad pie could be and how inventive one could become with a pie plate, something called homemade pie dough and “filling” could be interpreted.

I also saw the power of Pie. Pie binds us. Pie tells a story. Pie is simple, and very very hard. Pie explains hospitality in edible form. Pie is summer. Pie is conviviality. And Pie competitions are fierce.

And, as said best by the Aligator,
Revenge is a dish best served Pie.

"Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken." -- Jonathan Swift

One sunny afternoon recently, I found myself in the Mission with a fork poised above a towering slice of double-crust apple pie. Before I could mangle the freshly baked fruit sculpture in front of me, my binging companion spoke up. "First you have to test the crust," she said, flaunting her culinary school education with a flick of the wrist. "A perfect crust is so flaky that it can be easily cut with the side of a fork."

The crust shattered nicely. With the pie cleared for landing, I sank fork-first into the dimpled depths of gently spiced apples, savoring one bite and then another before it was time to move on. Though my taste buds pleaded for just one more nibble, this was my first visit to Mission Pie, and I was staring down one small tart, two oversized pieces of pie, and an entire galette. I had work to do.

Mission Pie opened in January with a simple concept: to make good pie. After the "I'm so thin, you're so thin" 1980s and the anti-carb hysteria of more recent years, dessert is finally back in style. It's so in, in fact, that entire restaurants are devoted to nothing but sweet nothings, cafés dedicated solely to chocolate are popping up all over, and dessert tastings are available on more and more menus. In this environment, the pie café is an idea whose time has come.

Mission Pie is an offshoot of Pie Ranch, a non-profit educational farm in San Mateo County that works with Mission High School students. "The original idea was to create a food business as an urban anchor point for Pie Ranch so the youth we work with would have a place in town to come to," said Karen Heisler, co-founder of both Pie Ranch and Mission Pie. "Pie seemed like the obvious choice."

In addition to their farm duties, teens ring up purchases and whip the cream by hand with wire whisks. Right now, the pies are baked at Destination Baking Company by Joseph Schuver, a principal in both businesses, but plans are already underway to build an on-site bakery that will be operational by next March. Then the students can start turning out flaky crusts layered with banana cream or apple themselves.

Most of the ingredients are organic and many are local. Pie Ranch supplies things like pumpkins and berries when in season, while other items -- Sierra Orchards walnuts, for example -- are grown nearby. Scones, savory Mystipies, and organic fair-trade Taylor Maid coffee are also for sale. The café is small but inviting, with pies displayed on bright pink and orange cake plates and daily selections advertised on a colorful chalkboard outside the entrance.

Pies here are refreshingly old-fashioned. On our visit, I fell in love with the walnut tartlet ($2), a miniature variation on pecan pie that layers caramel-colored walnuts with sweet curd that's a little bit jiggly, a little bit firm. My partner in pie suggested pairing bites of walnut and apple ($3.50) so I greedily piled some of each on my fork. Genius. The open-faced strawberry galette ($5.50) was a bit too tart after the sweeter choices, but I liked how the jammy fruit was sprinkled with crunchy oats and sugar crystals, and the egg white-washed crust was near perfect. A thick slice of sweet potato pie, decorated with a gigantic blob of whipped cream, tasted lighter and brighter than pumpkin.

We managed to eat most of our gargantuan order, and I took home the rest to my boyfriend. He ate the leftovers with eyes closed and when he was finished, he pushed the plate away, patted his belly, and smiled. Proof positive of Kathy's observation: "Pie is a make-people-happy kind of food."

Mission Pie
2901 Mission Street (enter on 25th Street)
San Francisco
(415) 282-1500
Open 7 days a week