Description

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Pie baking has never been easier with this gorgeous dessert cookbook full of swoon-worthy recipes and expert advice on baking the perfect pie crust.

Here are recipes for fifty perfect pies, including apple (of course), five ways with rhubarb, lemon chiffon, several blueberry pie variations, galettes, and more.

Learn the tricks to making enviable baked goods and gluten-free crust while enjoying Kate Lebo's wonderfully humorous, thoughtful, and encouraging voice. In addition to recipes, Lebo invites readers to ruminate on the social history, the meaning, and the place of pie in the pantheon of favorite foods.

When you have mastered the art, science and magic of creating the perfect pie in Pie School, everyone will want to be your friend.

About the Author

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KATE LEBO is the author of Pie School and A Commonplace Book of Pie. Her essay "The Loudproof Room" appeared in New England Review and was chosen for Best American Essays 2015. Her poems, essays, and recipes have appeared in Best New Poets, Gastronomica, the Washington Post, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She lives in Spokane, Washington.

Praise For…

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If actual school was as fun as Pie School, no one would ever play hooky. Kate Lebo has written a wonderful book celebrating the craft of baking fruit pies. Pie School is equal parts sassy and poetic, as sweet as a perfectly ripe peach with just the right balance of acerbic wit.
—Becky Selengut, author of Good Fish

Kate Lebo is the teacher we all wanted in school, her kitchen a classroom for lessons in life. Sure, there's plenty of instruction here on the tasty metaphysics of fruit, flour, and butter. But good pie is so much more—it's imagination and art and love. Hooray for Kate Lebo and Pie School.
—Langdon Cook, author of The Mushroom Hunters

Everyone should have a baker in their life—they are the sorts of friends worth cultivating. Treat your baker right (or encourage one into action) with a copy of Pie School, local author Kate Lebo's ode to all things flaky and sweet. The book promises "Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter" and it does not disappoint. Pie can be intimidating, but Lebo demystifies and charms in this beautifully designed volume. It's the sort of school we would all be eager to attend.
—Edible Seattle

Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter brings the lessons from [Kate Lebo's] baking classes to print with the same flair, wit, and enthusiasm in a book as rewarding to bake from as it is to read.
—Largehearted Boy

[Kate Lebo's] no-nonsense approaching to teaching, her poetic language, and swoon-worthy fillings make this a delightful and delicious read.
—Mom.me

In Kate Lebo, you have a passionate, knowledgeable, unintimidating teacher who advocates intuition, interpretation, imagination and relaxation while making pie. Her friendly, encouraging voice speaks to nervous novices as well as experienced bakers looking for a fresh fix.
—Jama’s Alphabet Soup

There are certainly bigger books on pie, but Lebo’s attention to detail and lighthearted delivery make this one a pleasure.
—The Seattle Times

This recipe book reaffirms a dedication to craft, brevity, and economy in both recipe and writing as a deeply connected physical and loving physical labor. The best recipes themselves are a work of art. This reviewer knows the power of such a book, where her own mother has already copied some of these recipes, and friends have begun to eye up this reviewer’s copy of Pie School, thinking of what pies they, too, can recreate or invent anew.
—The Los Angeles Review

In her new book filled with recipes for perfect crust, fifty different pies, and ruminations on the art, science, and significance of pie making, [Kate Lebo] opens her “Pie School” to everyone just in time for the holidays, inviting bakers everywhere to use their senses to turn pie into much more than just a dessert.
—University Book Store

If you’re intimidated by baking, Kate will hold your hand and walk you through the process. Pie School’s recipes are classics with modern twists and the writing will engage you and keep you wanting to learn more. This is a great book for any any cookbook collection.
—The Hungry Traveler

Abbreviating her in-person, face-to-face pie-making course for the benefit of us all, Lebo is all about the how-tos of the handmade—no food processors, no other kitchen machines, and certainly no store-bought prepackaged ingredients. The writing itself is almost enough to seduce. Who can resist, "You’ll know the filling is just right when you don’t want to stop eating it" and "Nectarines are peaches with a recessive gene for baldness?" Her book is packed with common sense as well as handy tidbits, many explained and photographed in step-by-step fashion at the front of the book, ranging from how to make a piecrust by hand to how to make "assembly-line" baked goods. Once satisfied that she has taught the basics, Lebo regales with around 40 specific pie choices, imparting lots of advice geared to each pie. For example, she uses leaf lard, a purer fat that pads a pig’s kidneys, for her apple pie. And demerara sugar is the preferred topping. A few of her other tempting selections include blue goose pie, mumbleberry (mixed berry) pie, and raspberry chiffon pie with chocolate cookie crust.
—Booklist

"Everything you need for cherry pie."
—South Sound Magazine