Hundreds attend annual pie competition at The Hyde Tavern

This is an account of the mythical – and delicious – charity pie competition sponsored and organised by Jan Theodore, heart and soul of the community pub in Hyde, that took place this Remembrance Sunday, November 10.

Together with Jan, a solid crew of family and friends and, above all, Ruth Theodore – one of Jan’s two daughters – and Jayne Bell, kept the show running as punters flooded the pub to sample some of the delights cooked up by the contestants.

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And it was all for a good cause – all this year’s proceeds, £700 in total, will be donated to Médicins Sans Frontières to bring medical equipment to those stuck in the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

“Before sending the money to MSF, I’m going to put out a basket on the bar, just to see if someone wants to add something, and I’ll leave it there for a week,” said Jan.

Of the 29 pies admitted to the judges' table, just three made it to the podium.

The overall winner was a sweet apricot pie, baked by the father-and-son team of Quentin and Jake Brooks. The savoury coronation chicken pie rustled up by Jayne Bell came second and Tracey Dunlop’s vegetarian offering came in third.

An honourable mention was also awarded to Goy Chaianirut for her massaman curry pie.

Over at the judges’ table, comments such as “that’s nice and crusty”, or “the pastry looks a bit difficult to cut” were just some of the snippets from the extremely serious selection process.

The verdicts were made with the utmost professionalism in St Bartholomew’s Church by the three judges: Cat Brandwood, professional wine taster from Winchester’s Italian enoteca Toscanaccio, David Mackie from The Steam Town Brewery in Eastleigh and the Chronicle’s very own Sebastian Haw.

“We have never done it in St. Bartholomew’s before,” Jan explains. “We used to do the pie judging in the cellar and feed people in the garden. But last year it poured a lot, so this time we opted for this solution, just in case.”

She added: “The competition is just a lot of fun, but people take it very seriously. Everybody wants to know what their score is, what they can do better. That’s why we need to keep people away from the judges, otherwise they’ll start asking too many questions all at once during the tasting. People start thinking already about what they are going to make next year!”

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Jayne Bell, who, as well as helping with logistics, managed to find time to cook this year’s top savoury pie, shared a few tricks of the trade.

She said: “The hotter the pie, the better it is.” For this reason, explained Jayne, all the pies have to be nicely laid on the judging table by 2pm.

Jan agreed. “One year we had a chap coming from London," she said. "He woke up at two in the morning to start baking. Then, as soon as it was done, he got in the tube with his pie, which looked like a pyramid, and then in the train. All the way to Winchester. We had to give him a prize, at least for the efforts. Because actually the pie wasn’t that good.”