Page 54 - United States of Pie

small businesses built on hard work, pride, and community—have
afforded them economic stability and independence.
Ninety-two-year-old Irene Bouchard is the grande dame of the

grape pie, credited by locals as the Queen of Pies. Irene began
baking Concord grape pies at the request of a local businessman, Al
Hodges, owner of the Redwood Restaurant. In the early 1960s,
Hodges added Concord grape pie to the Redwood’s menu as a way
to capitalize on the region’s most famous product and to lure tourists.
The pie was such a hit that demand for it quickly outstripped his
kitchen’s ability to produce them, so he hired Irene—who ran a home
bakeshop just across the road—to pick up the slack.

Irene had always been a skilled home baker, but it wasn’t until the
late 1950s, spurred on by her family and coworkers at the Widmer
winery, that she decided to open a bakeshop. At that time there
weren’t any other bakeries in town, commercial or otherwise, and her
bakeshop slowly took off. But everything changed when she began

baking for the Redwood Restaurant. People started coming from
miles around, hungry for grape pie, and a new local economy was
born. By the 1980s, Irene was baking thousands of pies a year.
Though Irene stopped baking pies several years ago, she can still
talk shop with the best of them. This downy-haired maven told me
about the “floating crust,” a technique that she developed as the
popularity of her pies grew. She would roll and crimp only the bottom

crust of the pie, pour in the thickened filling, then place a floating
round of dough on top of the filling, leaving an open half-inch
perimeter. This served as both a time-saver and a venting system.
As the pies baked, pools of sticky filling bubbled up around the
edges, seeping onto the surface of the pie. Ingenious!
As we sit and bond over our mutual love of pie, Irene shows me a

scrapbook her daughter put together for her. In one yellowed photo,
Irene’s husband sits at their kitchen table–cum-workstation,
surrounded by mounds of grapes. He was ready to help with what
Naples-ites call “pinching”—releasing the pulp of the grapes from
their loose skins. In another photo, a tour bus disgorges a horde of
tourists in front of Irene’s modest Victorian home. It hits me that
these travelers were like me, excited to catch a glimpse of this local

hero’s home and eager to taste her pies.