Baker's pies earn praise

Erna Fortin, baker at the Huckleberry Patch, has been courted by the Martha Stewart show, interviewed for a USA Today story and her huckleberry pies were ranked No. 3 in the country by Gourmet magazine.

On a recent Wednesday morning, a fan spotted her outside her baking lair and came forward, waving a copy of the USA Today article with Fortin’s photo. Bettye Partridge, a tourist from New Braunfels, Texas, wanted her photo taken with the pie impresario.

Fortin posed with her new friend and the article, flashing the smile made famous by her caricature on a local billboard and postcards promoting the Huckleberry Patch in Hungry Horse. As Fortin autographed the USA Today article, Partridge gushed about her huckleberry pies.

“I’m not really a fruit pie person,” Partridge said. “But it’s delicious. It’s just perfect.”

It wasn’t an unusual encounter. Fortin said that Partridge was the second autograph she had given that morning.

She shares the pie glory with Lisa Bartlett, the filling maestro. Fortin said that Bartlett developed her own concoction of huckleberries, sugar, tapioca and more that fills Fortin’s pies as well as jars sold over the counter and on the Internet through www.huckleberrypatch.com.

“She’s got it down really pat,” Fortin said.

Fortin enfolded Bartlett’s succulent purple filling in a tender pastry while reflecting a lifetime of baking experience. She got her baptism in flour at her mother’s knee, growing up in the Flathead Valley.

Her mom made pies with traditional lard, a tasty but unhealthy shortening replaced by vegetable-based products like Crisco.

“My mother could make pies really well,” Fortin said. “They were delicious — not the best for you, but they were good.”

A graduate of Columbia Falls High School, Fortin raised three children with her husband, Larry. They now enjoy their five grandchildren.

Fortin said she didn’t spend hours in the kitchen making pies while raising her children and working.

“I was a mediocre mom when it came to the baking part,” she said with a laugh.

Living for many years in Coram, she worked housekeeping jobs at various resorts. Then, 20 years ago, she noticed the open baking position at the Huckleberry Patch and decided to apply.

She had never baked professionally, but she convinced the former owner, Jackie Watkins, to add her to the team of bakers.

“When I came to work here, there were several [bakers], but over the years I took it over myself,”  Fortin said. “It’s kind of a messy process.”

She doesn’t follow her mother’s method of making pie crust. When she started as a Huckleberry Patch baker, she decided to hone her own approach.

“They had a recipe they used for pie crust,” Fortin recalled. “I wasn’t crazy about the way it turned out.”

To make a better pie, she researched many recipes and adapted the best aspects of those into her own. Under intense interrogation, she revealed a few of her secrets.

 First and most important, she makes every pie by hand. Fortin maintains machine mixing makes the dough too tough.

“I can tell by the feel of the dough when it’s just right,” she said.

Using a hand pastry blender, Fortin combines flour, salt and shortening for seven pies at a time. She moistens the mix with her special concoction of egg, water and, oddly enough, vinegar.

“It makes your pie dough flakier,” Fortin said.

When the dough clings together just right, she rolls out and places the bottom crust in a pan, and then adds the premade filling. She cuts a vent hole in the middle of the top crust, turns under the edges and flutes them before the final step.

“I use an egg and sugar wash on top,” she said. “It helps it brown better.”

Fortin makes and freezes about 2,500 pies for each tourist season. Each one gets wrapped in a plastic bag for freshness and placed in a box to keep it from getting crushed. 

When the throngs of hungry visitors arrive, Fortin bakes her pies, 10 at a time, in a 350-degree oven until they’re golden brown. It usually takes from 45 to 60 minutes, since the filling is precooked.

“We’ve already gone through 1,800,” she said.

Her pies, extolled in advertisements as slices of huckleberry heaven, have made an impression far beyond the borders of Montana. The USA Today reporter was impressed by the sales of about 40 a day, and a foodie from Gourmet magazine ranked Fortin’s pies as third best in the nation after a covert visit.

“I didn’t know they were here,” she said. “We just got a note later that we made No. 3 in the nation. I thought that was pretty good.”

So far, the Martha Stewart production company has made two appointments to visit while taping segments in Glacier National Park but was delayed both times and never made it. National publicity of that type provides a substantial boost to a small town and its businesses.

After the USA Today story, the Huckleberry Patch was bombarded with phone calls from people around the country wanting pies and other products. Now people may order pies through the website and receive them out of state within two days.

According to Fortin, the site was recently upgraded with good results.

“We have one person working full time shipping out huckleberry items,” she said.

Fortin works from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. year-round at the Huckleberry Patch baking pies as well as biscuits, muffins and 21 different flavors of fudge such as rocky road, butter pecan and cappuccino.

“Huckleberry cheesecake is our No. 1 best seller,” she said.

 Huckleberry pie reigns supreme as the only pie sold at the business. Fortin said they used to bake apple and cherry pies, but they didn’t sell nearly as well.

“This is a huckleberry place,” she said.

The versatile berry has made a name for itself as well as Fortin. She gets a kick out of her celebrity and still enjoys her job, although she doesn’t eat much pie after working with it all these years.

And don’t expect any delicious smells wafting out of her kitchen on her days off.

“Now they can’t get me to bake at home,” Fortin said with a laugh.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.