This petite bakery has piroshki and pies to celebrate no matter the occasion
Oksana Lusnikova recalls wandering through the fields of her family’s home in Ukraine, picking cherries, strawberries and poppyseeds, the red flowers a common village sight. Tearing into one of her own poppyseed piroshki, she said, “I can smell it from my childhood.”
The scent of sweet dough emanates from her tiny bakery at 1111 Main St., tucked between a laundromat and a teriyaki restaurant in the plaza shared with Auburn Main Street Market and a thrift store. A small pastry case shows off the day’s selection of piroshki — filled with beef and cheese, smoked salmon and rosemary, sour cherry or poppyseed, raspberry and farmers cheese. Along the wall, a cooler atop a cooler offers cloud-like cheesecake with an almond crust and rhubarb meringue pie.
Take a bitter espresso sip after biting into your sour cherry piroshki, and you, too, can taste those memories of a simpler time.
“I want my children to be like me, to feel what I feel” — to know good food, real food, said the 39-year-old mother of two, who moved to Western Washington four years ago to reunite with her mother-in-law.
She never imagined herself in America, but now she has embraced the adventure as one she was meant to experience. After starting a home-based flower business, she longed for those memories of her grandmother rolling the soft yeasted dough, rising overnight and filled in the morning.
Everything at Pie Style is made by hand: “to roll, to make shapes, to fill,” said Lusnikova. “It’s a big process.”
With the assistance of just two other bakers, she arrives at the bakery as early as 4 a.m., working up to 16 hours a day to create these piroshki and pies, plus a sourdough loaf bread perfect for sandwiches or with soup, her preferred accompaniment.
Most fillings are traditional in her native home on the border of Crimea, but finding high-quality substitutions in the United States proved a tall task. She found one brand of sour cream, for instance, that compares. Sour cherries, pale pink and tart, differ from the typical bright-red, sweet buttons Americans recognize in danishes and doughnuts.
Lusnikova has noticed an affinity for colorful baked goods, which piroshky inherently are not: The surprise is hidden, wrapped in folds of the pillowy dough that resemble a dinner roll, glowing golden-brown from a light egg wash before baking. She settled on Nutella as a crowd-pleaser, and her 8-year-old son approves.
What’s perhaps most appealing about these sweet treats is that they are, conversely, not too sweet at all, and Lusnikova cares just as deeply for the savory side, treating salmon with juicy respect and adding feta and basil to roasted red pepper. In addition to a classic Polish sausage, other combinations include chicken and mozzarella, mushrooms and potato.
She lets her whims, and the season, drive the rotating menu, meaning you’re sure to find a new surprise on subsequent visits. If available, try a slice of rhubarb pie, piled high with meringue; honey cake, layered with sour cream and cinnamon; or raspberry mousse topped with a generous layer of whipped cream. She often stocks mini pies — tartlets packed with blueberries, raspberries or pecans — even fulfilling an order for 80, requested by a customer just before his death.
“‘It has to be from your bakery,’” Lusnikova recalled his wife saying. One step inside Pie Style and the affection makes sense.
On display during our few visits, the Monastery Log Hut beckoned to be ordered for the next special occasion. Ten flaky, crepe-like pastry sheets, rolled with sour cherry, are layered into a pyramid shape, intertwined with cream and dusted with chocolate. The history is murky, but it perhaps originated in monastery kitchens as a truly decadent treat, counter to the inhabitants’ usual austerity.
Like all things Pie Style, it’s made by hand.
“It’s just good ingredients,” said Lusnikova, “and love.”
PIE STYLE BAKERY
▪ 1111 E. Main St., Auburn, 206-294-8809, facebook.com/piestyle1
▪ Tuesday-Friday 7 a.m.-7 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
▪ Details: sweet and savory piroshki, pies and more Ukrainian pastries made by hand
▪ Must order: sour cherry piroshki, smoked salmon piroshki, the day’s pie
This story was originally published July 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM.