Market Made Bakers

Hoosier Mama Pie Company | Chicago & Evanston, Illinois 

Got her start: The Green City Market

While growing up in Indiana, Paula Haney found gratification in baking early by making pie (usually apple) as an expression of affection for her dad. In college, a job baking pastries for a coffee house was as much for fun as income. After graduating, she wasn’t interested in using her journalism degree, but didn’t know what to do instead. Her husband’s advice: Do what you love. That sparked the idea to turn her pie-making pastime into a career.

The couple moved to Chicago, and Paula quickly moved up the baking ranks in kitchens across the city, culminating in a position as pastry chef under Chef Grant Achatz (then at Trio), renowned for his continual creativity. It was thrilling, but equally exhausting. On her days off, Paula found the comfort she craved in pie. “It’s not trendy or complicated like the things I was making at work. I realized I just wanted to make pie,” she says. So, she left the restaurant, keeping in mind her goal of opening a shop. Because of the sizable investment required for a shop, she started slowly with a stand at Chicago’s highly curated Green City Market, where only local and certified sustainable products are allowed, and where she sold her first pie in 2005.

The market let her earn a following, but access to local produce also helped shape her baking philosophy that’s focused on seasonal ingredients. Paula still sources ruby-stalked rhubarb for her pies from a farmer she met there. In 2008, her sweet and savory pies (as well as muffins, scones, and cookies) got their own home when she opened Hoosier Mama Pie Company. Today, she’s turning out hundreds of pies each week, and she’s still at the market each summer.

Known for: Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie, a simple vanilla custard pie that’s the state pie of Indiana.