Did you know that most commercial pies are made using premade commercial pie crusts and pie filling from a can?  Unless the bakery, company, supermarket, orchard, restaurant, etc.  tells you otherwise on the label,  their pies are generally made this way.  How else do you think that supermarkets, bakeries and stores can sell you a pie for just a few dollars?  It’s much easier and much cheaper to make pies this way than to do the actual work of baking from scratch with all natural, premium ingredients.

Because any pie filling in a can has to be preserved it always contains high fructose corn syrup and other preservatives.  Companies, bakeries, restaurants, supermarkets and other places that sell pies buy huge cans of pie filling at special box stores that cater to  restaurants and food service organizations.  Take a commercially made pie crust, fill it with ready-made pie filling from a can, bake it and voila – there’s a typical fruit pie in a typical store.

At Gilbert’s the holidays are our busiest time for pies.  Our artisan pies are heavy, completely handmade, laden with fruit and taste delicious!  We make our pie crusts using our own gluten-free flour mix.   We use real sliced apples that we blend by hand into our own mixture of rice flour, sugar and cinnamon for the pie filling.  Our crumb topping is made by hand using rice flour, brown sugar and non-hydrogenated palm oil.  The pumpkin we use in our pumpkin pies does come out of a can in which the only ingredient is pumpkin.  We do not use gluten, peanuts, nuts, corn or high fructose corn syrup in our pies.

We are thankful for our new and repeat customers and their testimonials such as “Your pies are part of our family tradition”.  Our pies do cost more, since everything is made by hand and we use real fruit and natural ingredients.  We think that they are worth the price and we believe that you will agree.   We hope you have a wonderful thanksgiving and that you enjoy your food and your company!