Taste of nostalgia

Tradition lives on in the frozen apple pie from Holy's Bakery

STORY SUMMARY »

KAPAAU, Big Island » It's a simple pie of apples, sugar and cinnamon, frozen so you have to bake it yourself. It's not especially glamorous, not very thick or large. But it's a pie with a reputation for a delicious buttery crust and lots of nostalgia.

Buy the pies Find Holy's Bakery frozen pies: » Oahu: Star Supermarkets » Big Island: KTA Superstores; Takata, Nakahara and Arakaki Stores in the Hawi/Kapaau Area » Maui: Ah Fooks » Kauai: Sueoka and Ishihara Stores

It's the Frozen Buttered Apple Pie from Holy's Bakery, a longtime favorite, especially as omiyage from the Big Island. It's a pie that speaks of a family tied to the history of Kapaau, one of two small sugar plantation towns in North Kohala.

As in Hawi just a few minutes away on Akoni Pule Highway, the main street in Kapaau can be walked in 10 minutes or less, sprinkled with a restaurant or two, gift shops and galleries that cater to the tourists that stop on their drive to scenic Pololu Valley at the end of the highway.

Holy's Bakery is on Holy Bakery Road, in the heart of Kapaau, just behind the Nambu Building that served as a hotel and restaurant in the 1920s. It was a busy place during World War II, catering to traveling salesmen who passed through town and construction workers who boarded by the week.

Yoshio Hori started the bakery in the 1930s just down the street, but moved it to the area behind the Nambu Hotel, owned by his uncle. The family name, Hori, when pronounced with a rolled R, sounded a bit like "ho-lee" to non-Japanese ears; so a Y was added and the name Holy's Bakery stuck.

The Hori family was from Hiroshima, Japan; Yoshio was born in Honolulu in 1903. The family returned to Japan and Yoshio was raised there, but returned to Hawaii as a teen and settled in the North Kohala area. Yoshio married Miyako Yanagida and they had seven children, six boys and a girl, who all grew up in the bakery, helping after school, especially during World War II.

Yoshio learned to bake by trial and error. The oven was a makeshift affair: an old-fashioned metal box sitting on top of a kerosene stove, typical of the era, remembered Margaret Hori, Yoshio's daughter, 77, who now runs the bakery with her brother Richard Hori, 75. "When he was starting out, he wrote to his mother in Japan to learn how to make the filling for the anpan (baked bun filled with sweet beans)," said Margaret.

Yoshio baked bread and delivered loaves to the plantation camps at Hawi, Halawa and Hoea. During World War II, Holy's Bakery supplied hamburger and hot dog buns for stands in Waimea catering to soldiers training at Camp Tarawa. And of course he produced pies, doughnuts, anpan and pastries for local folks.

After World War II, the family expanded the bakery and traded an old brick oven for a new one, along with other machinery. Yoshio began making apple pies in the 1960s, a tradition that continues today.

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KAPAAU, Big Island » "Please Toot Your Horn for Your Order" says the sign on the Holy's Bakery building on Holy's Bakery Road in the heart of Kapaau. Toot and Margaret Hori or her grandson Ryan Mullen will emerge from their home next door and select a pie for you from their walk in freezer.

Holy's Bakery pies -- apple, coconut, pear and peach -- are all sold frozen, at the bakery or at retail stores throughout the state. They are simple pies, made with canned fruit, sugar and spices. The crust, made of shortening, flour, sugar and buttermilk, is pretty standard. But beneath the fruit filling and the top crust, dabs of butter melt as the pie bakes, perfuming a room and embellishing the flavor of the pie, endearing it to Hawaii residents for nearly a half century.

Pie-making occurs when the freezer empties out, according to Margaret, who, with her brother Richard Hori and grandson Ryan assemble the pies. On some days, brother Harry Hori and his wife, Ellen, will help out. The bottom crusts are made one day, the top crusts are made another day. The fruit fillings are prepared and sit in large, stainless-steel bowls. A day is spent assembling the apple pies, another day for the pear, peach and coconut pies.

On pie-assembly day, a neat and efficient production line is set up starting at 5 a.m. A baker's rack holds the bottom crusts in their pans, another holds the stacks of top crusts. Mullen places four bottoms on a work table and places exactly seven butter chips on the crust. "It's been that way all these years," says Mullen. He repeats this 15 more times, stacking the crusts in a neat spiral and moving them to Margaret.

Margaret places the crust on a scale and fills it with a generous 2 cups of fruit filling. Another seven butter chips are placed on top of the fruit, then the top crust is put in place. The whole pie must tip the scale at 2 pounds, 4 ounces; Margaret adjusts the filling as needed.

Mullen takes the assembled pie off the scale and presses down firmly with a sealer/crimper. The pie moves to the next position, where it gets a light brushing of cream over the top crust, then goes into a pie box. The boxes are sealed with tape and placed in shipping cartons. The whole carton goes into the walk-in freezer, where it remains until it is shipped out.

Mullen is the runner: He stacks the crusts and tops, replaces empty bowls of fruit with full ones, wheels finished cartons into the freezer. In a period of four to five hours, the pie-assembly team of four can put together 700 pies, one by one, without the benefit of machines.

Each member of the Hori team has a specialty. Margaret bakes shortbread, macadamia nut, Chinese almond and chocolate-chip cookies for sale in the Hawi and Kapaau area. Richard bakes anpan and pastries to sell at the Hawi farmers' market on Saturday mornings. Mullen bakes cinnamon and raisin breads, anpan, bread pudding and doughnuts once a month for sale in local stores. During Thanksgiving week, the Horis also make custard and pumpkin pies and they sell baked apple pies (without the butter under the crust).

When they started baking pies nearly a half-century ago, they sold for $1.25; today they are $9.50 at the bakery, higher in retail stores.

Until about 10 years ago, Holy's had an outpost on Oahu. Holy's Bakery Manoa, located on East Manoa Road from 1979 to '89, was run by Richard and his wife, Janet, and their son Joel.

Joel's wife, Jan, remembers that mass quantities of not just frozen pies, but also baked pies, cakes, breads, rolls, even wedding cakes, were made there and sold from a small shop out front.

Wholesale orders went to all the supermarkets, plus restaurants such as the Willows, Wisteria and Zippy's (before Napoleon's Bakery came along). Pies were shipped to all the islands except the Big Island, which was serviced by the Kapaau bakery.

Later, the operation moved to town and produced just the frozen pies, until 1997, when the elder Horis moved back to the Big Island.

Jan recalls those years as involving a huge amount of work, done mostly by her in-laws and husband, who kept his full-time job as an air-traffic controller. She'd set up her oldest son in a playpen in the bakery while she helped box and sell pies -- also working around her own full-time job.

But having a bakery on Oahu did make it much easier for locals to get ahold of Holy's wildly popular baked goods.

"At Thanksgiving," Jan says, "we'd have lines out the door!"

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CORRECTION Friday, February 29, 2008 Holy's Bakery founder Yoshio Hori and his wife, Miyako, had two daughters, Margaret and Yayoi. This article mentions only Margaret.