When Rick Sebak from Public Broadcasting Service in Pittsburg, Pa., called Carlene Staller in search of a sugar cream pie last year, she initially assumed the call was a prank. Then the guy, who actually is an award winning PBS documentarian, started talking about Staller’s daughter Natalie Warner and her Rolling Pin Bakehouse in Roanoke. “He’d found my daughter’s Web site,” Staller said. “He was looking for the best sugar cream pies.” Staller bakes sugar cream pies along with apple, peach, rhubarb cream or blackberry pies. She’s known as the Pie Lady on 5. During the 2013 Fourth of July weekend she set up a table and chair in front of her house at 4391 S. Ind. 5. She put a dozen pies on the table, just to see if they would sell. They did. The next day she made 15 more and they were bought. She kept up her roadside sales for a month. “People started contacting me after that,” she said. “I didn’t need to make them and hope to sell them.” Her sugar cream pie is made with a secret recipe, one she developed 30 years ago. It will be one of the featured pies in Sebak’s “A Few Good Pie Places” documentary, which will air on PBS 39 Tuesday at 8 p.m. “Natalie is a home based vendor, too,” Staller said. “She also will be featured. I think they were intrigued by the mother-daughter aspect. She started three months before I did. I kinda copycatted her. “When Rick called her, she said, ‘You’ve got to call my mom, too.’” While Staller sticks to pies, Warner makes cookies, bread and other baked goods. A PBS film crew worked at the house just north of South Whitley for about four hours last September. “I was so nervous,” she said, “but they were so nice and made me feel so comfortable.” Staller has been baking pies for 38 years. She and her husband, Ross, have five children: Ben Staller, Macy Augustus, Natalie, Vanessa Hart and Whitley Frye and 16 grandchildren. Staller said she doesn’t remember Natalie being especially interested in baking. Warner started baking when she got married. “Maybe they learned more than I thought,” she said. “They’re all good pie bakers.” Not everyone likes to make pies though and that’s where Staller can help. She likes a 24-hour notice for orders and the pies are baked the day a customer plans to pick them up. Most sell for $10 to $12, with sugar-free pies costing more. Holidays are busy times for pie makers, of course, and the Stallers recently upgraded the kitchen to accommodate three double ovens. She had 25 pie orders her first Thanksgiving and only one oven. Last year there were orders for 36 pies and the new ovens came in handy. The Stallers downsized from a big house on Main Street nine years ago. “The business is slowly building,” she said. “Although we’ll see what happens after the PBS show. My sugar cream pie might become famous.” To place a Pie Lady on 5 order, call Staller at 260-224-7992.
