Not Your Grandmother’s Pie | Listen

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A new generation of pie makers is molding the future of Southern pastries

Pie is found in every corner of this country. And yet, no one does pie quite like the South.

“When I think of Southern pie, I think of nostalgia,” says Keia Mastrianni of Western North Carolina’s Milk Glass Pie. “It’s about the feeling it evokes through memory and history.” Evan Colibri of Virginia. Pie. Shop. describes it in one word: “tradition.” Lauren Wright of Wilmington, North Carolina’s Pie Slayers agrees: “For me, [Southern pie] is obviously something really traditional, just classic flavors that my grandma would make when I was growing up.”

Today, though, Southern pie is evolving. Bakers like Mastrianni, Colibri, Wright, and more are building on the foundations of the past to construct their own visions of what pie looks like in the region today, from the wetlands of Florida to the foothills of North Carolina to the coastal communities of Virginia. As one new-wave pie baker tells me, “It feels like pie is having a moment right now.”

Mastrianni, founder of Milk Glass Pie, is one of the bakers charting the course. A self-taught baker, she’s been baking pies since 2014, but the business really gained momentum in 2020, when she started delivering pies to people’s front porches during the homebound days of the pandemic. Today, she bakes and sells her pies from the farm where she lives with her husband; naturally, her baking is inextricably linked with the seasons. “I really delved into seasonality when I became enmeshed in North Carolina’s food system,” she shares. “It was a way to get the best ingredients of the moment.”

That hyperseasonality has resulted in a chamomile custard pie made with homegrown chamomile, a banana split cream pie with in-season strawberries turned into a bottom layer of jam alongside fudge-swirled whipped cream, and a PB&J pie with a filling made from muscadines harvested from vines located on the family farm, planted decades ago by her husband’s grandfather. Mastrianni also bakes thoughtful, surprising spins on Southern classics, like a savory tomato pie with heirloom tomatoes and homemade cider mayonnaise, and a Key lime pie with a gingersnap crumb, satsuma marmalade, and salty sour cream whip—the latter a particularly bright spot during the barren days of winter.

Beyond creative flavor profiles, she treats her pies like art pieces, drawing inspiration from classic cake decorating techniques. One thing she’s always asking herself: “How can we make this pie even more beautiful and delicious?” As she explains, “I see pie evolving in that way. Just how artful can we make it?”

Milk Glass Pie’s influence has spread: Across the state, in salt-scented Wilmington, bakers Lauren Wright and Keala Yu of Pie Slayer cite her as an influence for their pie baking. Though their aesthetic—whimsical, boundary-pushing pies with a punk rock sensibility—is uniquely their own.

“Pie doesn’t have to be what grandmas make,” says Wright. “A crust is just a shell—you can put anything in there.”

That anything ranges from a giant cinnamon roll on top of orange zest and cardamom custard, to caramel corn piled on a salted caramel-topped sweet potato pie filling, to a nostalgic ice cream cake-inspired combination of chocolate cake, seasonal jam, and ice cream. Their most popular flavor, the cheekily named Banana Stranger, is inspired by an Icelandic candy and includes a layer of dark chocolate brownie, roasted banana pastry cream, salted marshmallow meringue, and snappy dark chocolate.

Their ideation process is exactly what you might expect from such chaotic mashups; as Yu explains, “It’s nonsense back and forth until we have the perfect idea.” The result is an injection of fun, spontaneity, and much-needed innovation in a baking genre that too often is frozen in a prison of tradition.

Not to say that tradition is limiting. Other bakers are drawing on historical threads to make pies with one foot planted firmly in the past and one in modernity, looking to generations of bakers before them to create their own personal pies.

Keith and Evan Colibri, partners in both life and business, bake in the Virginia Chesapeake, where Evan grew up. At their cottage bakery, the appropriately named Virginia. Pie. Shop., they’re digging up recipes that have fallen by the wayside and using them as inspiration.

They’re particularly drawn to old church cookbooks, which, in their words, authentically speak to a sense of place. One such mid-century cookbook informed their sweet potato pie, which is made by whipping the egg whites separately for a lighter texture. (That technique was also inspired by Virginia-born culinary icon Edna Lewis.) The other key to this classic pie, and their baking more broadly, is an emphasis on the exceptional local produce of the region. That sweet potato pie is made with Bayou Bell sweet potatoes grown on the Chesapeake’s Eastern Shore, which Evan says have such great flavor that they keep the skin on when baking with them.

“The Eastern Shore of Virginia definitely deserves proper attention,” Evan emphasizes. “It’s the gem of the Chesapeake and home to the third regional coastal cuisine of the South, along with New Orleans and the Lowcountry. We must exalt it and protect it at the same time.” This manifests not only in classic Southern pies filled with the produce of the region, but more unexpected iterations, like their peanut butter pie with chocolate ganache. It’s a spin on the more common pecan pie, with a brown sugar and molasses filling but using the ubiquitous Virginia peanut.

Beyond a menu shaped by local agriculture, Evan and Keith aren’t afraid to get a little weird: One of their most notable pies was an unconventional black licorice custard pie that won over even their most skeptical customers.

Many bakers bringing fresh ideas to Southern pie are relatively new to the game; Pie Slayer and the Virginia Pie Shop have both been open for only a few years. But even bakers who’ve been around a while are continuing to reshape what pie means in this region.

All the way down south, in Jacksonville, Florida, longtime baker Allison Vaughan continues to make her subtle spins on classic pies at her bakery, 1748 Bakehouse. The first pie in her life came from her Virginia-born grandmother, inspiring her first pie business, My Grandmother’s Pie, and her dedication to Southern pie culture today. “I ask my bakers to stay true to a more Southern pie, meaning we do a lot of fruit pies,” she says. “But only when they’re in season!” Which means no apple pie for the Fourth of July, no matter how popular it might be. It also means a sweet lime pie, similar to but not the same as Key lime pie, but only during a short period of the year when the limes are in season.

In the off season, there’s chess pie, which you might call Vaughan’s specialty. “Chess pie is so quintessentially Southern,” she says. It’s historically a humble pie, one made with a few affordable staple ingredients. But at 1748, Vaughan uses that simplicity as a blank canvas, spinning out chess pies with flavors like hibiscus, honey and Earl Grey, and strawberry lemon. Lately, she’s been experimenting with liqueurs in buttermilk chess pie. “It’s unexpected,” she explains, “and I’m always looking for things that other people aren’t doing.”

Beyond getting creative in the kitchen, these bakers are united in their dedication to their community. For them, pie is more than a dessert; it’s a gathering point to bring together neighbors and strangers.

In North Carolina, Mastrianni throws pie parties on her farm, collaborating with baker friends for a special bake sale alongside a mini market with artists, makers, and local community organizations. The men behind the Virginia Pie Shop have similar ambitions: They dream of converting an old farmhouse into a space to host events, baking classes, and dinner parties, plus highlight local sourcing and farms to reconnect consumers to the local agriculture system.

The women of Pie Slayer, meanwhile, opened their first brick-and mortar location over the summer, one with their characteristic individual streak: Rather than a traditional pie shop, it’s a late-night dessert bar that serves wine and beer alongside pie slices. And at Vaughan’s Florida bakeshop, she makes the connection to community explicit, with “Community comes first” printed across the front window. “Community for me is not just our neighborhood,” she says. “It’s the farmers and producers. Community is the backbone of who we are, and it really makes a lovely place to work and be.”

These bakers are proving that innovation can be loud and bold, like Pie Slayers, or subtle and nuanced, like 1748 Bakehouse. They’re inspired by tradition and Southern produce, but not bound by it—instead, they’re putting their own spin on this long-standing dessert, reshaping a culinary legacy in real time and creating an exciting new baking landscape.

As Pie Slayer’s Wright says, “Pie is about to have a whole revolution.”