Pie School - by Kate Lebo (Paperback)

About the Book

"A revised and refreshed version of our 2014 paperback. The new edition [includes] a rewritten intro [and] two new chapters: one on unusual fruits and one on rustic weeknight-friendly savory pies"--

Book Synopsis

Pie School is now in session!

Since the first publication of Pie School in 2014, Kate Lebo has inspired bakers everywhere with her witty and encouraging lessons on all things flaky and sweet. This completely revised and updated edition includes 20 brand-new pies--including two new chapters, one on savory meat or vegetable pies and one on "difficult" (lesser-known) fruit pies--plus updates to the originals (80 in total). Her proven process to achieve flakiness and structure, along with recipes for delicious, inspired fillings, will give home cooks all the skills they need to make the best pie of their lives. Beyond the bake, Lebo also invites us to ruminate on the social history, the meaning, and the place of pie in the pantheon of favorite foods.

Recipes include

Brandied Apple and Cracked Cardamom Pie

White Peach and Raspberry Galette

Rosemary Rhubarb and Vanilla Chevre Galette

Winter Luxury Pumpkin Pie

Huckleberry Pie

Marionberry Pie with Hazelnut Crumble

Lamb, Pumpkin, and Quince Pie

Chicken Pot Pie

Review Quotes

WIRED Best Cookbooks of 2023 (So far)
"Freshly revised from the 2014 original with new and updated recipes, it offers soothing lessons in technique and taste. When your hands are coated with sticky dough, [Lebo's] voice is a balm, and clear photos keep you from worrying.
--WIRED.com

"I love Kate Lebo's Pie School so much. It's reassuringly detailed for new cooks yet full of nuance that make veteran cooks like me say, "Oh wow, right!" The recipe lineup feels fresh and personal, with inventive recipes so solid they seem like classics."
--Martha Holmberg, James Beard Award-winning co-author of Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables and author of Simply Tomato

"With recipes and words that spotlight traditional pie-making both savory and sweet, Kate Lebo's Pie School is a definite keeper for any pie-maker's bookshelf."
--Kate McDermott, James Beard Award-nominated author of Art of the Pie

"Kate Lebo's prose is rich and spiky, her voice spiced with wit and undergirded with tenderness; her work is pithy, well-researched, and always profoundly knowledgeable. Sure, she writes about food, but she's really writing about humanity, her own and all of ours. To call this 'a book about pie' is like calling Moby-Dick 'a book about a whale.'"
--Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man and Blue Plate Special

"Kate Lebo's Pie School will delight you with its word play and train you to be the most capable baker in your neighborhood."
--Katie Quinn, author of Cheese, Wine, and Bread

"It's hard to imagine Kate Lebo's improving upon Pie School; it was one of those triumphantly instant classics that rendered itself indispensable from the get-go. And yet the hindsight that emerged from life during COVID and writing her wonderfully weird, gorgeously geeky literary masterpiece Difficult Fruit has resulted in a second edition even more special and, if it's possible, essential than the first."
--Charlotte Druckman, author of Women on Food

"As with our most revered teachers, Kate Lebo, [in Pie School, ] inspires us with her infectious passion for her subject--deciphering a daunting topic with the gentlest of hands and unwaveringly cheering us on to be the best cooks and people we can be. This is school you'll never want to graduate from."
--Peter Hoffman, chef and author of What's Good: A Memoir in Fourteen Ingredients

"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."
--Becky Selengut, author of Good Fish

"Kate Lebo is the teacher we all wanted in school, her kitchen a classroom for lessons in life."
--Langdon Cook, author of The Mushroom Hunters

About the Author

KATE LEBO is the author of the essay collection The Book of Difficult Fruit, which won the Washington State Book Award. She is also co-editor with Samuel Ligon of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and Booze. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Essays, Harper's Magazine, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Ecotone, The Inlander, and elsewhere. She lives and bakes in Spokane, Washington, where she is an apprenticed cheesemaker to Lora Lea Misterly of Quillisascut Farm.