Simply Pie’s Gail Ang: Home Baker on the Rise

In Manila, home bakers are probably a dime a dozen. In weekend gourmet markets, you’ll meet at least 20 home-based businesses hawking all kinds of baked goods in each of them. Blame it on the phenomenal success of those who gave Manila the best stops for desserts -- Sonja’s cupcakes, Sweet Life’s frozen brazo de Mercedes, Ms. Polly’s famous chocolate cake, Maricel Cunanan’s ensaymadas and other queens of their own dessert kingdoms. It seems that if you’re a woman of leisure and could afford it, baking is the surest way to make a name for yourself without having to leave the comfort of your home. I used to imagine the home baker as a lady of exceptional taste, the perk of having the resources to have the best of the best, thereby allowing her to create the most delectable treats whose quality she will never, ever compromise in exchange for a quick buck. I also used to envision her to be middle-aged, a bit on the plump side. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong about that cookie cutter stereotype of a home baker. Today’s Filipino home bakers are equally uncompromising but they are young, spunky, quick to the draw, driven and with a sharp mind for business.

Meet Gail Ang, 26 years old, creator of the line of pastries which simply goes by the name of, well, Simply Pie. A fine arts graduate of the University of Sto. Tomas, major in advertising (magna cum laude), Gail has come a long way from graphic designing for a footwear brand to selling high-end gourmet goods to hotels and restaurants as part of a food company and now to baking some of the finest sweet and savory pies there are from the fourth floor of their house in New Manila. Gail has literally leaped from footwear to food. “January pa lang, alam ko na. I wanted my name to be Simply Pie," says Gail. She was one of the top account executives of Werdenberg International Corporation, a Swiss-owned importer and distributor of food, wine and kitchen products, when she decided to break out of her 3-year job last March to take a big leap into the pastry business. True calling Gail is no ordinary home baker. For one, she did not grow up at her mother’s knee in the family kitchen. Up until three years ago, she didn’t know how to cook. But one thing was certain; she had always been fascinated with food. In fact, she grew up reading the whole collection of Nancy Drew mysteries but always finding herself always re-reading the parts describing what Nancy, George and Bess ate. She discovered her passion for food right after she left her first job at the footwear company. She desperately wanted to do something different, but with no particular job in mind. It was, therefore, serendipitous when she got a text message about an interview with the president of what she knew then as just a sausage company. She remembers, “I vaguely remember that I applied online but I totally forgot about it. Sabi ko ano ba itong mga sausages na ‘to? Wala naman itong kinalaman sa akin." The company was Werdenberg which has Santis Delicatessen as one of its retail stores. It was during the interview that Gail found her true calling. Gail was soon selling close to 4,000 various food and kitchen products to hotels and fine dining restaurants. She worked closely with chefs and learned the ropes while watching them in action. Her passion for everything that had to do with food became an obsession. The foodie bible, Food Lovers Companion, quickly became bedside reading. She devoured food magazines and cookbooks. “Whenever I see a good recipe or pictures, kahit 'yung ingredients lang, naiiyak ako," she admits. She soon knew all the food items in Werdenberg by heart. She researched what they were for and how to use them, so she could answer client’s questions. Her job felt more like a daily field trip to her, going into the giant walk-in freezers and being exposed to the best European meat products, cheeses, duck liver, rabbits, steaks, fresh vegetables shipped daily to the warehouse. Soon, Gail was cooking lavish Sunday lunches for the family, channeling what she learned from the chefs and using the ingredients she knew so well. On the side, she took a short course in Baking and Pastry Arts. Shortly after, she would make a decision to leave the job she loved so much. Gail told her boss that she wanted to go into business. Her concept for Simply Pie took flight. She says, “Before, I didn’t like baking. Mga cakes, ang hirap-hirap naman niyan, di naman ako mahilig kumain ng cake. Naisip ko i-combine ko kaya. More of savory na baked goods, yun ang naging concept ko. Savory baked goods." Delicious dream A perfectionist, Gail experimented with several recipes before finally coming up with her line of products. Even the heavenly puff pastry that encases her sweet and savory dishes went through a series of trial-and-error. The flaky crust is what sets her pies apart from the rest of the competition. It is simply perfection – flaky but not crumbly, soft to the bite but can hold hot and chilled food very well. Simply Pie has given birth to a line of mini-pies which foodies are now calling the new cupcakes. The size of a cookie or a muffin, her mini-pies are just the right portion. You can simply get another if one mini-pie isn’t enough. They are also packed with good flavor combinations such as her mini-quiches, Spinach-Feta-Sundried Tomato and Tyrolean Smoked Bacon-Parmesan-Gruyere (both P350 for a box of 9). No wonder TV personality Marc Nelson went back to her stall in the gourmet market to get one whole box of the spinach quiches after sampling one bite. Her Baby Pies line which includes the Chicken Dijon Baby and Apple Baby (both P525 for a box of 9) are bursting with goodness. True to its pitch, the Chicken Dijon is the sauciest ever as the creamy mustard Dijon sauce oozes out once you slice the pie in half. However, it was the Nata Lychee Dream (P350 for a box of 9) that came out first in the line of mini-pies. Upon the advice of her mom who wanted her to do a lychee pie instead of the usual cheesecake that she orders, Gail thought of combining lychee and a bit of nata de coco on top of the cheesecake filling in the crust, a sweet-salty combination that worked. It is now one of Simply Pie’s top sellers. As most home bakers do, Gail works only with the best ingredients she can lay hands on. For her moist and fiber-filled Oat So Healthy Muffins, she uses only 100% stone ground whole-wheat flour which she buys from a health store. Pursuing passion Simply Pie is simply Gail’s form of expression. It is both her passion and her way of reaching her dream, that someday her food line might be bought out by a food conglomerate. But for now, she works solo on the top floor of their house where she has held fort and set up her kitchen – oven, chillers and freezers – baking her goods from 3 a.m. when she gets the quiet she needs up to 12 noon. She is her own one-woman team doing not just the baking but the marketing, selling of her goods at the weekend market, as well as packaging and designing her ads and her online sites which is where she uses her skills as an artist. But to keep her focused, she also has her family’s full support. She has found blogging as a very effective marketing tool for home bakers like her. This early, Simply Pie is already earning rave reviews including a favorable mention in Lori Baltazar’s www.dessertscomefirst.com. She also receives praises and lots of orders on Simply Pie’s Facebook page. However, the best piece of encouragement is still when customers try her products, do repeat orders and give them as gifts. Even better, on the first day of Mercato Centrale, her goods were sold out at 11 a.m. Gail has embraced her new life and immersed herself totally in home baking as a career. The young and strong-willed baker cum artist is going all out. Right now, she is already planning her new product line to be launched in February 2011. She says, “If your heart is into what you’re doing and your passion is there, I believe that even if you start small, in time you will grow big." But her best piece of advice to anyone wanting to take the same leap she made is perhaps, the one that found her in a series of events that led her to find true happiness as a home baker: “Pray and let God guide you." - GMANews.TV