This week’s pie: an American fall Year-round Classic

We’re pleased to feature Cynthia Gizdich’s famous heirloom Mutsu apple pies once again this Friday, as she’s baked up another great batch for us. In case you missed the news last week, here are the details:

As the calendar turns to fall (even if the weather still feels more summerlike), we are excited to move into apple pie season! Which means more scrumptious fruit pies from Cynthia Gizdich at Gizdich Ranch­­­.

This week’s featured pie is her heirloom Mutsu apple pie. The Mutsu apple, which originates in Japan, is one of the top baking apples (you may know it by its other name, the Crispin). Its aromatic scent and honeyed flavor makes this heirloom a particularly welcome treat. And it’s on sale for $14.99 (regularly $16.99).

Cynthia’s pies, which she bakes right in the bake shop at her family’s ranch in Watsonville, are famous year-round. In addition to the featured heirloom Mutsu apple pie, she’s been baking up a storm of goodies from the bounty of the harvest – heirloom Newtown Pippin, heirloom Blenheim apricot – and for people who just want to grab that last bit of summer berry flavor, her famous double berry pies.

As American as…(well, maybe not so much).

As best as we can determine, the forebears to our version of apple pie hearken back to England in the late 1300s. These pies contained no sugar because of its scarcity and cost, yet the recipe did call for saffron. Its crust was inedible (by design).

As a Swedish pastor wrote home from Delaware in 1759 about the local apple pies: “… its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel [runs] over it.”

Thank goodness those days are long behind us! We’ll leave it to you to decide whether we mean the tooth-breaking crusts or driving 101 and 280 by horse-drawn wagon.

Whether you commute by car, public transport, bike or on foot, we look forward to seeing you in the store to pick up one or more of Cynthia’s pies.