Southern Pie on the Rise

In 2012, Amanda Wilbanks launched Southern Baked Pie Company out of her Georgia home kitchen. Within a year, she opened her first brick-and-mortar shop. Soon, three more bakeries followed, as well as a successful mail-order business and her first cookbook, Southern Baked: Celebrating Life with Pie (Gibbs Smith, 2018). We invited Amanda for an in-depth chat about her bakeries, the top recipes from her cookbook, and her general pie wisdom.

When did your love affair with baking begin?

: Every Sunday after church, I would go to my grandmother Betty’s house, and we would bake. I grew up making her homemade biscuits, standing on a chair pulled up to her bar. I learned how bread and biscuit dough should feel. I was always mixing the dough by hand. I’d even mix fruitcake by hand, and even though it was so sticky and gooey, I’ve just always loved to have my hands