bake - April 2013 - 44

A Classic Pie Window
After studying journalism at San Diego State, working various
sales and marketing jobs in New York City and growing dissatisﬁed with her new career, Jaynelle St. Jean returned to her
mother’s house in San Francisco. On Valentine’s Day in 2010, St.
Jean tested out an idea that would eventually take on a larger,
more permanent form in the years to follow.
She dressed up a window at her mother’s house in the style of
a classic country window. She baked pies and gave slices away,
for free, through the window she had set up. She aimed to
recreate the close-knit community vibe that one might see on
every corner in a small town, and very rarely in a densely packed
city like San Francisco.
She only had one stipulation for the people who accepted a free
slice. “I wanted people to hang out and talk,” St. Jean says. “I
wanted to meet people.” She realized that she may have inadvertently found her calling.
After this initial experiment at her mother’s house, St. Jean
moved to Oakland to see where her pies could take her.
Once her idea caught on, the boutique, from-scratch pie busi-

worked out of my mom’s house, making pies for people I know

ness dubbed “PieTisserie” began to gain increasingly more

and always delivering them personally.”

exposure. In the beginning stages of the business, in which
she baked primarily out of her home, St. Jean admits she only

In the summer of 2011, St. Jean had a small taste of how her

knew how to make three pies. She didn’t have any pie boxes,

business could translate to a permanently located shop. She

so she personally delivered pies to people in glass dishes,

set up inside the front window of an Oakland restaurant that

having to come back later to retrieve them. But St. Jean was

had just opened. Though it was short-lived, St. Jean met more

learning what it took to run a successful independent business

people and some of the regular customers gained at that loca-

in the thriving Bay Area.

tion still buy her pies today.

St. Jean was one of the ﬁrst vendors to set up shop in the early

For the next year or so, St. Jean was in and out of a handful of

stages of San Francisco’s Underground Market, a DIY farmer’s

kitchens, renting space to produce more and more pies. She

market/co-op dreamed up by Bay Area amateur chefs, forag-

jokingly claims to have a key to every kitchen in Oakland from

ers and independent food providers. As a result, PieTisserie’s

PieTisserie’s long, sporadic phase as an on-and-off pop-up with

reputation for superb treats began to spread through the Bay

rotating locations.

Area foodie scene — an inﬂuential set of people in the local
culinary community.

“I baked pies at my house,” St. Jean says. “I rented ﬁve or six
different kitchens in the last three years probably. I delivered

“I got some good gigs early on,” St. Jean says. “I had a 70-pie

pies until my car died then I started using the bus. Then I was

gig at a major ﬁlm studio — that was encouraging. I mainly just

baking in the kitchen of a restaurant where I met the chef of

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