Sue Moody has been one of the main pie bakers at Moody’s Diner for the past eleven years. She came with a lot of experience. Before Moody’s, she worked in her husband’s family restaurant in Thomaston, baking pies, cakes and rolls, working the cooking line, helping in the seafood market, and even ringing up customers at the cashier. When they sold the restaurant Sue took some time off. Four later or so, Moody’s invited Sue to join them. They would have liked her to do a lot of the same, but she held out for baking pies. And, at their volume of pies, it’s a full-time job and more. Sue can’t remember a time when she didn’t bake. She learned from her mother who relished making cookies, bars, cakes, pies and anything else sweet. When Sue was 10, she baked her first pie, apple. Sue Moody is all Waldoboro, born here, schooled here, and married to a man who was her schoolmate for all twelve years. When she’s out of the kitchen, she’s tending to her flower gardens and six long vegetable beds. She does everything herself, from the planting, the weeding, the watering, the harvesting and finally, the canning to ready for winter. She also watches over her great grandchildren, passing on her love of baking and using the recipes from her mother plus the Moody’s Diner Cookbook and the original Betty Crocker Cookbook.
Nerve-wracking is what I’d call my first day at Moody’s. Any first job is nerve-wracking because you want to do it the way they want it, you want to please them. And I had to learn a different way to bake a pie. It was just a matter of learning how to do it. And now I think I’ve done that! Hahahahaha.
I get up at 2:15 in the morning and come to work around 3:00. After I clock in, first thing I do is take inventory. See what’s left, what I’m going to make. Cheesecake, freezer pies – we make it all. I check to see if there’s any donuts left, because I make them, too. We’re starting to do cinnamon rolls, so I get that mixture going because it has to rise. Next, I start my donuts and the different kinds of donuts I’ll do for the day. If I have time before frying the donuts at 5:00, I’ll work on my custard fillings. That way, they’ll be cooled when the donuts are done. If I have my lemon filling done, I’ll put the lemon merengue on it, top it with merengue and cook that. Then, when my custards are done, I’ll start on the fruit pies. Apple, strawberry-rhubarb, four-berry, blueberry, and when it’s in season, raspberry. Also, the cheesecake. Usually, my custard and walnut are already in the oven when I do the donuts.
You’ve got to make the crust first. I’ll do that first thing because then I’ll have a whole bunch of dough for whatever pies I’m making. I make enough to hold back a bit for rolling at the end of the day, so I’ll have pie shells for the next day. I make both sides, top and bottom.
Oakleaf Lard, flour, salt, and water is what I use. I use only cold water for the pie crust because it makes the dough really pliable so you can stretch it and move it the way you want.
If I’m doing an apple pie, I’ll peel the apples. I use Gala. Then I’ll do the sugar mixture, stir it all together, and pour it in the shells. I like to put a little butter on top of the mix. Then I roll out the top and put that on. And brush an egg wash over the crust. Lastly, I wrap a cloth around the pie and set it on tin foil because I don’t want it to leak in the oven. It cooks for about an hour and 20 minutes.
For the berry pies, I use frozen fillings except when we have fresh blueberries in summer. We’ll do eight or ten every day of those then. Everyone wants a fresh blueberry. Hahahaha.
A good day is when everything comes out the way it’s supposed to. How it turns out at the end, the presentation, that’s what I’m proud of. If there’s a secret ingredient, it’s love.
But everyone has a bad day, too, when things don’t go right. Like when a pie overflows and you got to clean the oven. It’s not a big deal, but it slows you down, and then you got to redo the pie. Sometimes the custard, if the cloth isn’t on well, it will get in between the pie pan and the crust and piddle out. That happened today. But you have to clean the oven because if you don’t, it will smell, and if you have a lot of them going in, it will stink all day, and you’re not the only one who smells it. The rest of the kitchen does, too. So, I do it as soon as I can move out the pies onto racks. I get out a wire brush and soapy water and scrub until it’s clean.
You’ve got to want to cook, or bake, for things to come out right. Because if you really don’t want to do it, it’s a waste of time – it’s not going to come out the way it should. You’ve got to take your time. Ask questions if you don’t understand something. Give it your all. That’s where the love comes in. You can’t cook half-hearted and then say, “Close enough.” It won’t come out right.
My day ends about 11:00 AM, sometimes even 10:00, but that depends on how much I have to do. Come summer, I’ll be lucky to get out by 1:00 PM.
Then afterwards, I go home and babysit my great grandchildren. Mostly we cook together, and they’ll get on their stools and say, “Okay, Nanny, what are we going to bake today?”
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