On the road back down to Sebastopol, we stopped at Mom’s Apple Pie.

I’m not going to lie. We were feeling the effects of all the food at this point. But we walked in with open minds, looked at their pastry cases of double crust pies and cream pies, and promptly ordered a medium sized peach pie.

I think there’s always room for pie, especially because I don’t really eat the crust. I can recognize a good one, but to me, it’s just bland, buttery stuff that gets in the way of the fruit. That turned out to be a good thing, because this pie crust tasted more like flour than anything else. Maybe it wasn’t chilled or baked long enough, or–god forbid–had too little fat in it. It was kind of flour-y and dry. You can tell by the picture that it’s a bit too light and dull.

The crust was a bit dome shaped and was mostly divorced from the filling that lay on the bottom, with a big old air pocket between the two. The peaches were more like preserves than pie filling. It may be a thin line of difference, but I think pie fillings should be slightly gelled and a little looser than preserves. The flavor was ok, but more tart because of the concentrated fruit.

So, we were a bit disappointed. I hate to be negative about places that I’ve only been to once and I know must struggle to get customers and seem to be literally a Mom and Pop place, but I’m judging based on my own criteria and recognize that quality changes day to day, or even pie to pie. It’s just that getting bad pie dampens the spirit.

And don’t get your hopes up from this sign in the parking lot. They only have deli sandwiches and such. I guess it’s just supposed to look cool. We learned the hard way. And yes, we would have ordered it if they’d had it. We may have been full, but fried chicken is fried chicken.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Bakeries/Pastry Shops, Sampling, Sonoma Valley. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.