Our Story
The Golden State Pie Contest was created by Christine Mineart out of her love for making the perfect pie crust. San Francisco doesn’t have a county fair, and the Golden State Pie Contest was her way to bring a bit of the country to the city.
Christine baked at the Big Sur Bakery and founded a farmer’s market bakery, Surf Muffins in Joshua Tree. While today she is not baking professionally, she loves to share the craft of baking with her friends and family. She grew up baking with her mom, and after losing her to cancer in 2024, Christine found herself baking more again as a way to remember her mom during the grief. The Golden State Pie Contest is her way of bringing joy into the world, because how can you be unhappy when you’re eating pie with friends?
You can read her serialized memoir, My Sourdough Era, on Substack - a story of bread, heartbreak, and iconic California landscapes. It is based on her experience founding the bakery Surf Muffins: a farm-to-table cottage bakery, one of the first microbakeries featuring local whole grain flours and gluten-free options.
Christine’s story of crust
She learned to bake at home from her mom and Grandma (both pictured here). Her mom was known for her perfect cookies and had plenty of cookbooks around to inspire Christine. Christine began baking on her own at the early age of seven, fearlessly frying churros and kneading bread in her childhood kitchen.
After her grandma died, Christine inherited a copy of Martha Stewart’s Pies & Tarts. Martha’s pate brisee recipe elevated Christine’s pie baking and taught her the fine art of a flaky crust.
As a home baker in Seattle, Christine won first place in a pie contest with her blackberry-apple sage pie. Winning the contest compelled her to learn more baking techniques. She borrowed as many baking books from the library as she could and practiced meringues, caramels, and macarons on the weekends while she worked in an HIV vaccine lab.
After graduating from UC Berkeley with an MPH, Christine decided to take baking seriously. She started a bakery in Joshua Tree, California, sourcing ingredients from local producers. She went on to bake at the famous Big Sur Bakery to learn how to bake wood-fired sourdough and feed hordes of summer tourists. She continued to be interested in sustainable grain production and received a small grant from the Small Planet Institute to write about grain farmers and microbakers on the West Coast.