Slightly Crooked Pies gets a brick-and-mortar spot with hopes to open by Pi Day
Lauren Cline was very excited. She had just taken delivery on a special toy: a commercial sheeter capable of rolling out large volumes of dough — in her case, pie dough.
“It just got delivered today!” she said excitedly.
Cline, the owner and operator of Slightly Crooked Pies, has run a homestead bakery for several years, baking bespoke pies for individual customers and filling wholesale orders, but she has made a leap of faith and will open a brick-and-mortar pie shop on Elm Street in Manchester within the month.
“A series of factors all came together and told me, ‘It’s time,’” she said. “I always wanted to be in Manchester. I always wanted to be on Elm Street, and a place with a kitchen became available in a building that matches the aesthetic of my business, which just was amazing. And I think right now, with the nature of the downtown businesses, you know, we work together, we support each other. I have so many mentors just on this one strip. I just have to pinch myself over being a part of that ecosystem.”
The new pie shop, also called Slightly Crooked Pies, will offer more than pies, Cline said; this will be more of a conventional bakery.
“In addition to our full-size pies, we’ll be offering mini heart and hand pies,” she said, “both large and small hand pies. We’re going to feature either cookies or bars of the month. We’re going to carry [French-style] macarons. We’ll have frozen chicken pies to take and bake, and we’ll have a freezer of our take-and-bake pies so you can make your house smell good and take all of the credit for yourself.”
But the focus will remain on pies, Cline said.
“We’ll have staples that will be always available year round — cherry, apple, blueberry, pecan, and chocolate-bourbon-pecan. And then, I’ll be able to work with creams and custards,” she said. “So I’ll be able to have lemon meringue, Key lime, and chocolate cream pies. The chocolate cream will actually change three times a year. I’ll have traditional chocolate cream, and in the summer we’ll go to a s’mores [pie] — it will have a graham crust and a marshmallow. cream top. And then in the winter months I’ll be making a peppermint hot cocoa [pie], which has got a little touch of mint in the chocolate, and then a marshmallow-whipped cream top and a chocolate cookie crust.”
Cline’s plan is to offer fruit pies in season, she said.
“For instance,” she said, “from May through late June we’ll have a strawberry-rhubarb. In the middle of the summer we’ll have peach. And in the fall we’ll have something I call SweaterWeather — an apple-pear [pie] with cardamom in it. And the top is braided so it looks like a sweater, because it has a very warm, comforting flavor. We’ll also be rotating in our award-winning varieties that we have. We’ll feature one of those a season — blueberry-lavender, maple-pecan, and, of course, SweaterWeather.”
Cline said she has surprised herself with how calm she has been at taking the big step of opening an almost-all-pie shop. She sees a real demand for homemade pies (in her case, rolled by machine, but made by hand.).
“When I tell people I’m opening a pie shop they get really excited in a way that surprises me,” she said, “even after doing this for many, many years now. Almost everyone says either, ‘I love pie!’, or, ‘Oh, man, my grandmother….’”
Slightly Crooked Pies
Slightly Crooked Pies (slightlycrookedpies.com) will be located at 1209 Elm St. in Manchester. Owner Lauren Cline hopes to open her doors on March 14, Pi Day.
Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.
