On an unseasonably chilly Friday evening in Vineyard Haven, Juliska on Main street is packed, though oddly quiet save for the occasional “yum... this is good” and a persistent scrape of silverware on plates. Odd sounds for a store devoted to tablewear.
Behind a table Chrissy Kinsman stands beaming. In front of her are the reasons for the night’s reverie. Pies, lots of them.
It’s 6 a.m., but the energy feels more like noon at the Orange Peel Bakery in Aquinnah. Music is blaring, the sinks are full of dirty pots and bowls, the mixer is going and the counters are covered with vats of bread dough and pre-ferments (wild yeast) that are so active they are pushing the lids off the containers.
Juliannne Vanderhoop looks up from lighting her outdoor stone oven that could house a character from a J.R.R. Tolkien story, and recalls how it all started.
The Gazette has been pretty fearless in exposing dredging errors, environmental threats and the like on the Vineyard, but I wonder if you would consider also covering the lawsuit against Pie in the Sky Bakery in Woods Hole that the Martha’s Vineyard Saving Bank is carrying out?
Julianne Vanderhoop’s front yard in Aquinnah features a modest house and small pond fed by a Black Brook underground spring. The property is otherwise unremarkable — unless you count the 20,000-pound beehive-shaped bread oven, made of several thousand terra blanc tiles mined from a clay quarry in France.
The wood-fired oven produces 30 to 40 pieces of baked goods a day for The Orange Peel, Ms. Vanderhoop’s new home bakery.
Their alarm goes off while the moon is still high.
It is the wee hours of the morning, 3 a.m., but pastry chefs Kate and Gates Rickard have just arrived at work. As the corners of the sky turn their first shades of pink, the husband-and-wife team fire up their oven. Soon, the tops of the sourdough loaves, ciabatta rolls and long baguettes they shape by hand will have turned a golden brown.
Mark Twain said, “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” In these days of climate change that’s no longer strictly true, but most people recognize the sentiment. And as much as weather, community is one of those things that everyone talks about and everyone feels strongly about.
Low-fat is not part of the vocabulary at the Savory Pie Company.
“I’ve had people ask me if I had any low-fat and I look at them like you’ve got to be kidding me,” owner Dee Smith said at her Tea Lane Catering kitchen in Chilmark this week. “There’s a need for gluten free and we’re just starting with that, but there’s certainly no word like low-fat in our category of pies.”
For those easily intimidated by pie making there is a simple home truth; find someone who has mastered the art, and buy a pie from that person. For many an Island household, Eileen Blake, of Eileen Blake’s Pies, was that go-to expert for nearly 40 years.
With a shiny brass espresso maker and French countryside decor, Rickard’s Bakery on North Summer street in Edgartown opened this week. Owners Kate and Gates Rickard are starting with what they call a soft opening at the shop which will sell bread and other baked goods, sandwiches, soups and espresso. “Everyone’s been ducking in to welcome us to the neighborhood,” Mrs. Rickard said. The shop is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. It will close Feb. 26 and reopen for good on March 7.
