Red Door Bakery

One great thing about traveling is getting to try out local bakeries.  Or at least, that's one great thing for me, as I love all baked goods.  Sure, there are other benefits (weather, culture, etc), but come on, I write a food blog, I'm often drawn to the food.  

My family lives in New Hampshire, so when I visit them, I'm always happy to try offerings from the local merchants, including a new one for me: Red Door Bakery.

Red Door Bakery began life in Vermont in 1993 as the Marshfield Cafe, which then expanded into the Marshfield Bakery and Cafe (to reflect the focus and addition of more baked goods), and eventually dropped the cafe altogether and became a wholesale bakery.  They supply grocery stores and markets around Vermont and New Hampshire.

"We are a family owned and operated bakery in Marshfield, Vermont! Our mission is to bake great, old-fashioned goods the way Grandma used to make them. We use wholesome, basic ingredients and make everything from scratch. Enjoy!"

The bakery makes a big lineup of cookies and bars, granola and breads, along with pies, which is where I focused. 

Pies

"We pride ourselves on our handmade, from scratch pies here at the Red Door Bakery. We use NO canned fillings, NO artificial flavors, and NO artificial preservatives. Our pies are GMO free. When you get a Red Door Bakery fruit pie, that's what you get: a real fruit pie! 

Our pies start with a light, flaky crust made with only three ingredients: King Arthur Flour, Cabot Butter, and water. Into this crust we put a filling in which the main ingredient is always real fruit followed by other basic ingredients such as sugar, flour, and spices which complement the fruit. Finally, each pie is finished with Gram's traditional, hand-crafted rope edge."

The pie lineup has all the expected fruit pies: apple, blueberry, strawberry rhubarb, plus some more interesting combos like tripleberry, blueberry peach, or even just raspberry, not a variety I see by itself often.  The fruit pies are all double crust.  They also make a seasonal pumpkin and pecan, and a few years ago I saw some of their cream pies in markets around town (peanut butter, chocolate, mint chip, berries'n cream), although their website doesn't list them now.   They make mini 6" pies and regular 9" pies.

Triple Berry Pie. 6".

"Our Tripleberry Pie includes three fruits: Strawberries, Blueberries, and Raspberries for three times the pleasure!"

I honestly would have been happy with any of the fruit pies, so I let my indecision be guided by the "why not all 3?" thoughts of the tripleberry.  It looked like a charming, indeed homemade, pie.

It was a good pie.  Not mind blowing, but a good pie.  The filling had a few distinct tiny blueberries, but was mostly a thick berry paste, not as goo-like as generic canned pie filling.  I did not really detect any raspberry seeds.  Nice flavor that was just vaguely berry, no clear berries stood out.  Sweet but not cloying (still a bit sweeter than I'd really prefer, but just barely).  3/5, maybe 3.5/5 for the filling.

The crust was well formed and sealed.  It was lightly golden on top.  Excellent buttery flavor, fairly flaky, not tough.  Even better warmed up.  I was pleased to have the double crust for even more of it, although there was substantially more crust than filling, so the ratios felt off.  It was a crust I was more than happy to eat, but didn't necessarily steal all the extra crust as I'm sometimes known to do.  3.5/5, maybe 4/5 crust.  

One slight negative mark is that the pie was actually pretty hollow under the top crust, so there wasn't much filling to enjoy with the crust.

Overall, as I said, a good pie.  Best warm, a la mode.  I was happy to eat it, I'd be happy to try more of their pies, but I won't go out of my way for it.  3.5/5.