Digging a fork into a slice of pie from Johnson Orchards is a Yakima experience that countless residents rave about. As you take that first bite, you taste layer upon layer of fresh, flavorful fruit. Each bite of pie is well-balanced with sugar and spice. And the crust? It’s the most beautifully flaky, buttery golden crust, providing the ideal home for all that fruit nestled inside.
As the holidays near, the Bake Shop at Johnson Orchards ramps up production of their coveted pies, along with holiday cookies and a variety of other enticing baked goods. And while there are certainly plenty of delicious options for holiday pies throughout the Yakima Valley, two things make the pies from Johnson Orchards a bit different. The Bake Shop uses fresh fruit that was grown just steps away from the kitchen, and the pies are made with a whole lot of real butter.
Johnson Orchards was established in Yakima in 1904 by Alfred Johnson, and the warehouse that he built in 1916 to serve his fruit business is still standing on the property at 4906 Summitview Ave. today. And while the ability for visitors to grab freshly grown cherries, peaches, pears, plums, pluots, apples and apricots from that fruit warehouse has continued for many years, adding the option of picking up a sweet treat seemed like the perfect complement to the business.
Jill Johnson and her daughter, Adrienne Engelhart have been baking pies from the commercial kitchen at Johnson Orchards since 2011. The duo had been baking treats for special festivals on-site to celebrate each fruit’s season, such as a pear festival and pluot festival, and visitors kept asking for more.
“We would bake things to highlight those fruits, and it was really well received,” said Engelhart. “My mom always wanted to start a bakery, and people kept asking if we would make them again, so we thought ‘Hey, maybe this could actually be something.’”
With enough community encouragement, the mother-daughter team set out to learn how to open a small bakery operation, with just the two of them in the kitchen. As year after year went by, more and more orders came in, and the operation grew from just the two in the kitchen to a whole team of dedicated employees.
“My mom and I always baked my whole life,” said Engelhart. “We’ve definitely learned a lot over the years, and we’ve learned so much from our employees as well.”
While the Johnson Orchards Bake Shop is certainly devoted to producing a variety of baked goods each day, from muffins to cookies to scones, it’s the pies that everyone raves about for the holiday season. And the numbers certainly show.
“All through December is pretty busy,” Engelhart said. The number of pies for the month of December is well in the hundreds each week.
Perhaps the large number of pie orders the Bake Shop keeps up with is all due to that coveted recipe and the care that goes into it, enticing Yakima residents throughout the valley.
First off, the pie dough is made fresh every week. It’s handmade in the on-site kitchen with no preservatives. And the secret ingredient? Pie dough made with real butter.
“Everything is 100 percent fresh and from scratch,” Engelhart said. “We source fruit from our orchards first, but we also work with other local growers.” The bakers let the fruit do the talking when it comes to the flavor of the pie, allowing it to truly be the star of the show.
Johnson Orchards offers every type of pie flavor you could ever dream of, from key lime and banana cream to blueberry apple and pecan, but according to Engelhart, classics keep customers coming back.
“We’ve tried a lot of different varieties over the years, but people just love the classics,” she said. “Apple pie is the most popular of all of the varieties we sell.”
In the kitchen, the process for making a Johnson Orchards pie is a well-oiled machine.
For a classic apple pie, the dough is measured and formed to line a pie tin. Then, perfectly seasoned apples are piled high for the filling. Lastly, the top crust is added with a magnificently intricate design, and the dough from each crust is worked together by hand in a beautiful display to create the well-loved homemade double crust.
The pie is then baked to golden perfection before being boxed up and making its way to a pie lover’s home.
“It’s a great way to highlight each of those fruits and work with what’s in season at that time,” said Engelhart. “When things are made with the freshest quality ingredients, you can tell when you cook it. The quality that goes in will be apparent when it comes out.”
And that quality can certainly be observed by the care and use of fresh, local ingredients that make their way from the orchard to the oven in a Johnson Orchards pie.
The Link LonkDecember 04, 2020 at 09:00PM
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From orchard to oven: The life of a Johnson Orchards pie - Yakima Herald-Republic
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