NEWS

Special Touch pies nourish in many ways

Ryan Miller
Staff writer

It doesn't matter if it is apple, pumpkin or pecan, pie sounds especially delicious during the holidays. The homemade pies from the Special Touch Bakery not only taste good, they do good.

The bakery is one of several workshops that serve adults with developmental disabilities at Holy Childhood, a nonprofit in Henrietta.

The programs provide workers with jobs and prepares them for independence and integration into the community. The pies are already infused in the community. About 50 restaurants serve Special Touch Bakery slices. The business churns out 17 flavors and 17,000 pies per year. Aside from a handful of staff and volunteers, it's operated nearly entirely by people with special needs.

"Our workers feel pride and fulfillment about what they're doing," Holy Childhood CEO Donna Dedee said. "They feel good about their skills, the paycheck, and they feel exceedingly good of their impact on our community. We want to provide training that they can apply in competitive employment settings. Over time, our workers have gotten really, really skilled."

Alisa Santiago, 29, is one of those workers whose experience has been life-changing. Santiago has only been in the program since June but has been a swift learner and can practically recite the recipes by memory.

"I wasn't doing anything at home. I was being bored," Santiago said. "Now I'm working. I like it here. When I first came here I didn't know a lot, but now I've learned a lot more baking."

"People say that the pies are good when we meet them," said Laura Robins, a 10-year veteran at the bakery. "I like working with everybody. I've made more friends here than anywhere else I have worked. Alisa is nice. I try to help her and show her where things go."

Holy Childhood is made up of two wings. One houses a school for students ages 5 to 21 and the other consists of employment initiatives that include the bakery, a woodworking shop and Partners With Industry (PWI), which does subcontracting work with local businesses.

On this day, the expansive bakery is making apple crumb pies, its most popular flavor. And you don't need to venture far for confirmation.

"Is that an apple crumb pie you have there?" Mary McWilliams, a PWI worker asked in the lobby as her eyes lit up. "That's the best kind. You're going to love it."

The kitchen is a well-oiled machine, though the absence of machinery is conspicuous for such a high-volume operation. Everything is made by hand. Fifteen assiduous workers form a winding pie assembly line. They core fresh apples, measure filling and crimp crust, then pass the pie on for the next step. They made 135 apples pies in four-and-a-half hours. That's one every two minutes.

"Every adult has a task to do for the entire day that they're extremely proud of," said supervisor Shirley Lynch, who launched the program in 1985. "That means each pie is made singly, versus a mass-produced pie that's not made individually. Our pies end up being more like Grandma's pie because they're homemade."

More than 1,000 families picked up pies (which have been praised by Condé Nast Traveler) on Tuesday for Thanksgiving. That's part of the experience. You're bound to shake hands, chat and make friends with an affable student upon walking through the door.

"We're very grateful for the following they have and just to see people so happy when they get that pie," Dedee said.

RCMILLER@DemocratandChronicle.com