Pies emerge hot from the ovens every morning at First Lutheran Church in Minot, where volunteers don their aprons at 6 a.m. to knead the perfect dough, roll out round crusts, chop colorful fruit and beat the sugar and egg whites into a frothy meringue. Crafted from 100-year-old recipes, First Lutheran’s pies have garnered a reputation that makes the church’s fair booth a standard stop for many fair-goers.

“The church started doing it at the fair before it was a state fair. It’s our 101st year,” said Laurie Jenson, who has been coordinating the pie operation since 2018.

First Lutheran originally served breakfast, lunch and supper – fried chicken and roast beef – from space underneath the old grandstand, she said. The desserts have lived on at the pie booth, but the church also maintains a separate food booth with hamburgers, hotdogs and french fries.

It takes a large number of people to sustain the two food booths.

Karen and Ralph Kuhnhenn chop up rhubarb to put in pies for First Lutheran Church's food booth at the North Dakota State Fair.

On pie patrol, some volunteers work a single day but most work multiple days, including a few who work almost every day. Some work both in making pies and in serving them up at the fair.

Often they become specialists in their roles.

Betty Vibeto, a volunteer for about 30 years, specializes in making the strawberry pies.

“I’ve done the lemon, but I guess I like strawberry now that I know I have it down to a science,” she said, with a modest smile hinting she’s only half serious about the science part.

Joy Lavik, who has been helping for about four years, specializes in cracking eggs and separating whites and yolks for the lemon and the sour cream and raisin pies.

Kathy Mackey mixes pie dough Tuesday at First Lutheran Church.

While the job might not seem glamorous, Lavik said it is important because having someone to perform the task speeds the pie-making process and keeps it on track.

Keeping the pie-making process flowing is critical when there’s 60 pies to assemble and six ovens baking 28 pies at a time. Jenson said one oven has been out of commission this year, which slows the process because only 24 pies can be baked simultaneously.

The number of fresh pies made each day varies based on estimated demand. The booth used to serve from 80 to 100 pies a day, but as more food choices have become available at the fair, the demand is somewhat less, Jenson said.

The quality of the pie remains just as much of a priority for the bakers, though.

Everyone who is involved in the various steps in production plays a part in ensuring pies are both tasty and beautiful, but Jenson highlighted the crust rolling and fluting as artistic endeavors and the meringue making as a special skill.

Pie crust rolling is an art, exhibited here by Barb Solberg. The rolling pin experts at First Lutheran roll hundreds of crusts every year in the pie-making process for the church’s State Fair booth.

Holly Eidsness, who specializes in fluting, or crimping, the edges of the pie crusts, said when she was invited to volunteer about four years ago, she was reluctant. She warned she wasn’t much of a cook, and she wasn’t a pie baker. But she had a good teacher in the late Judy Ross, who taught her to flute crusts, she said.

“It is kind of fun, and it’s fun to hang around with the ladies,” Eidsness said of volunteering.

Mary Schaefer, who was mixing pie filling Tuesday, said the camaraderie makes the volunteering enjoyable. Her volunteer work also has turned her into a pie maker at home.

“I never really was a pie maker before I started working here. Being around all these wonderful cooks, you learn a lot,” she said.

Making pies can be a family affair, too. Laura Mihalick, who regularly volunteers to roll out pie crusts, was joined by her daughter one day this week while her mother prepared strawberry pies.

Carol Malcomb, who has been making pies since high school, flutes the edges of a pie before it goes in the oven Tuesday.

Ralph and Karen Kuhnhenn, who began volunteering after joining First Lutheran a few years ago, worked together on the fruit preparation line Tuesday.

“It’s a good way to get to know people in the congregation, especially when you’re new,” Karen Kuhnhenn said. “But I love pie. I love all kinds of pie.”

Rolling out pie crusts is considered one of the more skilled parts of pie-making, but First Lutherans’ “holy rollers” are quick to admit their success is dependent on the quality of the dough. They credit the dough maker, whose job of mixing and kneading must not only be precise but can be physically demanding on the hands and arms.

While the tried-and-true recipes don’t change from year to year, the tastes of fair-goers do. Strawberry pies and rhubarb pies have been best sellers early in the fair this year, while fair-goers were snapping up slices of peach pies last year, according to Jenson.

Jenson is a long-time volunteer who started by working shifts at the fair booth.

“I would bring my kids out there and I would be a prep-work person and they did the ordering, because the youth used to earn money working out there,” she said. Specifically, youth earned points good for cash toward youth group trips, she explained.

A third of the proceeds from the pie booth still goes to support youth programs. A third goes to the church general fund and another third goes to the women’s group, which designates its receipts to local, charitable causes such as food pantries, homeless and domestic violence organizations and youth camps.