MODESTO -- You couldn't blame employees of the Greens Market bakery if they want their Thanksgiving meal today to be more savory than sweet. After all, they’ve been up to their elbows lately in pie and cookie dough, cake batter, chocolate chips and fruit fillings, all to ensure that hundreds of households have plenty of treats on their tables.
By today, the bakery on Bangs Avenue likely will have made at least 400 pies — apple, pumpkin and pecan have been the top orders — along with cupcakes, quiches, cookies and more, said owner Ann Endsley.
“We’ve sold more than 150 pies just through Greens Market (on 10th Street) and have orders in excess of 200,” she said earlier this week. “We have a very efficient staff. ... We’re working from 2 in the morning to 11 at night. It’s all hands on deck, and we’re rotating shifts.”
The bakery did a brisk business at the Modesto Certified Farmers Market and has met Thanksgiving demand with the help of extra workers hired for that season.
But heading into the Christmas demand, and opening the Greens Table eatery next month at the Bangs location — previously occupied by The Lunch Pail — will mean adding staff, Endsley said. After all, there are lots of dinner rolls, croissants and sticky buns to be made, too.
Even home bakers would be hard- pressed to make their goodies more local than Greens’.
“Everything we do is pretty much local,” Endsley said. “We stockpile berries during summer. ... Our main thing is utilizing as much local produce as possible.”
That means freezing local berries and slicing and freezing local peaches and other fruits. Making some jams also is part of the process.
“We use local dairy products whenever possible,” she added, “including a lot of butter for those flaky pie crusts.”
And she called the quality of locally produced eggs “amazing,” noting that the bug-heavy diet of hens creates a rich, orange yolk.
“We have such great stuff in our area,” she said. “We want to keep more of it here, to be enjoyed by the community.”
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