Why the Belgian prune pie is at home in Wisconsin

Jun 17, 2021

Traversing the United States in search of pie, writer Pascale Le Draoulec was struck by the vastness of a country where an immigrant group can set up home and continue the traditions brought with them from the Old Country -yet remain relatively unknown outside of their immediate region. When she arrived in Algoma in Wisconsin after an evening spent at a fish boil on the banks of Lake Michigan, Le Draoulec encountered one of Door County’s most popular-and mysterious to outsiders- food traditions, the Belgian pie: “We found a roadside motel in Algoma. The innkeeper had a funny accent I could not place….The next morning, she came to find us as we loaded up the car. “You are going to try some Belgian pie, aren’t you?” she asked.”

Described as truly unique, when I posted a query for more information about the pie and its Belgian-descended bakers on a private Facebook group where food writers and industry insiders gather to chew the fat, only five of them had heard of it. Everyone was intrigued. “Go find out more,” they said.

This particular story of American pie begins with a small group of Belgians who migrated from their motherland to Door County, Wisconsin. Thousands of miles away from Belgium, they re-built their community and to this day continue to bake pies filled with fruit or cooked rice inside small outdoor ovens. These pies celebrate a successful Kermiss, the yearly harvest whose failure all those years ago in Belgium caused their ancestors to make a long Atlantic crossing in search of a better future.

Back in 19th century Europe, a harsh winter led to crop loss and a rural crisis in Belgium. The king, Leopold, supported migration and placed no restrictions upon it although only 29,000 Belgians left the country for the USA in this period. In the years before the First World War, another 50,000 Belgians arrived in the USA. (Travel to the little Belgian town of Grez-Doiceau, and on its town hall there is a plaque commemorating the first ten Walloon families who left the town to found a Belgian Community in Wisconsin in 1853.)

The Grez-Doiceau group boarded the Quinebaug, an old American three-masted ship and set sail on May 17th. The crossing was beset by storms, taking fifty days— a week longer than normal. In the last days of the voyage, passengers were starving, and two children died.

Once they arrived in their first American settlement, the Aux Premiers Belges had to adjust to the harsher climate and a sense of isolation in this vast land. Door Country lies on a peninsula of land some 50 miles long and twenty miles wide, surrounded by the stygian waters of Lake Michigan on one side and Green Bay on the other. The county name originates from the Potawatomi tribe whose members perished trying to cross the lake-passage in canoes, causing them to dub the waters the ‘Door of Death.’ Translated into French, it’s also known as ‘Ports des Morts’ and in English, ‘Death’s Door.’

Native Americans were the only human contact the Belgians had, living as they were on land that was, and remains, the ancestral home of the Menominee, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi tribes, among many. The Native Americans taught the Belgians how to trap wild animals and smoke their meat, tap trees, make maple syrup, and ice-fish in the winter on Lake Michigan and, as time passed, the incomers began adapting their Belgian foodways to this new place. Sadly, the Native Americans did not fare so well. They were displaced from their ancestral lands and forced onto reservations.

The Belgian communities of Namur, Brussels, Rosiere, and Little Sturgeon in Door County and eleven other villages located in Kewaunee and Brown counties have retained some of what made them special more than a century and a half ago. William Laatch, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, maintains that, after the Amish communities and Native-American tribal communities, the settlement of Belgians in northeast Wisconsin is the most enduring ethnic island in the United States. Unsurprisingly, Belgian prune pie has also remained geographically distinct.

Today, many Belgian descendants still live in the 35 square mile area settled by their ancestors, and some of their farms have been in the same family for over a century. The Kewaunee and Brown counties are where older Belgian houses can be found, and many of them have been built with outdoor summer cooking areas. The baking was done via radiant heat, and therefore the oven dimensions had to be precise. However, the ovens are generally not free-standing, as was the custom in Belgium, with its tradition of communal ovens. The wilds of Wisconsin, where communities and individual houses are often many miles apart, renders the communal oven less practicable than it did in compact little Belgium.

Many of these bake-off ovens could cope with forty pies, although most have since fallen into disrepair or have been demolished. Those left are made of masonry and fieldstone, with walls two feet thick and equipped with chimneys and oven interiors constructed from red brick. These whitewashed structures were often trimmed in green and provided much-needed shade during the dog days of summer pie baking.

The prune pie remains a regional speciality of Door County, whose population retains strong ties with Antwerp in Belgium, where the prune pie has its roots. However, in other parts of Belgium, this pie is not baked at all, according to Regula Ysewijn, a Belgian national and author of Pride and Pudding. Prune tarts have always been her favourite. In her home city of Antwerp, they are traditionally served on Ash Wednesday (albeit not in the same form as their American-Belgian cousin). Regula also suggested that Belgians from Antwerp immigrated to the United States via the Red Star Line, whose ships sailed from Antwerp directly. The line was supported via grants from the Belgian government. This might explain why the prune pie has a powerful presence in Door Country.

There’s some debate locally on whether prunes, rice or raisins are the traditional fillings, and these pies can be challenging to make. With a circular base of raised sweet dough made with mashed potatoes and a layered filling of cooked, sweetened rice or a pureé of prunes or raisins (according to which the makes considers traditional), their preparation is multi-stage as local bakers combine their talents to make the hundreds of pies required to feed everyone.

I spoke to Sue Marchant from the bakery where they make the pies year-round, ramping up production around Belgian Day (the second week in July) to 1000 pies and over 1200 for the duration of Kermiss. “We started making Belgian Pies about 50 years ago at the store. My husband’s great-grandmother came from Meeuwen in Flanders, Belgium, during the 1800s, and she was taught how to make the pies and which recipe to use, ” Sue said. “I learned from her and since then have been making them although I’m not actually of Belgian descent.” Their store receives many visitors from Belgium, including foreign exchange programmes; over 21 different students have stayed with the Marchant family. When I asked Sue about how their pies are received, she told me that they liked it despite its differences: “We have visited Belgium, and their pie is different, much larger in size and no cheese on the top and the fruit is not sweetened, so they are quite tart,” Sue added.

Meeuwen is a town in the province of Limburg where there also exists a custom of making fruit pies, says Regula Ysewijn. Referred to as Limburgse Vlaai ( Vlaai= tart or pie), these are open-topped pies, sometimes with a lattice pastry top and traditionally filled with cooked fruits such as cherries (called kriekenvlaai), apple or apricot and, more significantly, with rice or prune puree-the cooked rice and custard porridge is called a rijstevlaai. These pies are popular all over Flanders but are specific to Limburg, where they are served at funerals, Kermiss and other important family occasions, but the dough is different. It does not use potato and has only a small amount of butter, is yeasted and must go through two risings, whereas the Antwerp version uses a short pastry. There’s no curd cheese topping either. To be a genuine Limburgse vlaii, the whole pie must be baked and not just the pastry shell.

In his book, The History of the Belgian Settlements, Math S. Tlachac writes of the Kermis preparations which overtook the community:

“Then came the baking, which in the early days could only be done in outdoor ovens. As many as three dozen Belgian pies could be baked at one time. The Belgian pie! What would the Kermiss be without the famous delicacy, the crust made of dough, spread over with prunes or apples and topped with homemade cottage cheese? So tasty it was that one bite invited another.”

A hundred or so years later, The Post Crescent Newspaper from Wisconsin wrote about the October 1969 Kermiss celebrations, and it is clear that pie-baking remained a herculean task. There is an understandable reluctance to part with secret family recipes as a result, although one local baker was less secretive when interviewed by the newspaper:

“Mrs Jean Guth baked 120 pies to be served in her husband’s tavern for the Ker- miss in Brussels the first week in September. Mrs Mamie Chaudi’ous and her daughter made them by the dozens. And the women are still mixing and rolling the dough in their kitchens in these Belgian settlements. Though cooks are rather cagey about their special recipes, Mrs Guth was gracious enough to part with hers….”

Gina Wautier is her daughter and now runs Belgian pie-making classes in Door County. She can remember what happened after her mother shared her recipe with the local newspaper: “When mom was interviewed by news reporters in 1960, she caused quite a stir among the local women for sharing her recipe and allowing it to be published.” Mrs Guth was descended from some of the first settlers in the county, and the recipes she used were handed down from her own mother and grandmother, then used to perfect the thousands of pies she served to hungry travellers at the Brussels (Wisconsin) tavern she ran alongside her husband, Ray. There were thirteen other taverns in the immediate area, but none baked and sold as many pies as Mrs Guth did.

Pie-baking days in the Guth household were rigorously organised, and it is obvious why: “It was not uncommon for her to make 200 pies that would be given away and/or sold in my dad’s tavern at Kermiss time, ” Gina says. “For days, our home was covered with pies set out to cool; on the beds, extra tables, ironing boards, and on wooden planks. Cold storage was not an issue as the bar’s beer cooler was a great asset for the old peach crates converted into pie carriers.”

She recalls a childhood spent helping her mother in the kitchen on pie baking days: “Belgian Pie making as a young girl in my mother’s kitchen was more a lesson in observation rather than participation,’ she told me. “My jobs were important; dishwashing, peeling apples, pitting prunes, grinding cheese, and greasing the pie tins. My mom, Jean Guth, was very particular in mixing the dough, filling and baking the pies to perfection.” In fact, Mrs Guth made it clear that the method of handling the dough and its mixing are even more important than its ingredients.

Every Autumn, Belgian locals gather together to celebrate the bringing in of the harvest, starting with a thanksgiving mass. Kermiss was originally Middle-Dutch and comes from Kirk-Messe (the German kirchmësse, or ‘church mass’). It originated in medieval times as an annual celebration commemorating the church's dedication before it morphed into the later festival. In Europe, it has various spellings: kermis, kermes, kercmisse, kircmisse, keermisse, carmisse, kirmisse and kercmisse but none of them end with the double ‘s’ which seems to be the most common spelling in Door County and therefore the one I use here. Belgians have been described to me as community-minded and extremely social people. They historically valued the social side of church attendance to such a degree that it became a fundamental part of their collective worship. Amusingly, and as befits their practical side too, the Belgian immigrants made sure that they built saloons close to their places of worship— often right next to the church—so they could keep what they deemed as the less spiritual chatter and gossip away from the house of God but not too far away.

The Kermiss kept lonely Belgians in touch with their homeland, and they would travel great distances across this most northerly of states to meet and celebrate together. Some locals made round trips of 160 miles to buy the ingredients for their pies. The first Kermiss in the region was held in 1858 in Rosiere. A Father Daems came from the Bay Settlement to say Mass, and afterwards, local Belgians processed to a hall, serenaded by a band. The procession was briefly halted for a traditional ‘dance in the dust’ on a dirt road before resuming its route. Three days of feasting, dancing and socialising would follow.

Today, the Namur Belgian Heritage Foundation maintains the Kermiss tradition. Hundreds of local families flock to the little brick-built former church of St. Mary of the Snows to eat pies, trippe, jutt, and booyah. Amusingly, their ice cream is churned by a John Deere tractor.

Even though Gina Wautier helped her mother prepare the pies, she grew up with gaps in her knowledge and, concerned that the custom might be at risk of dying out, she set about the task of learning the process from start to finish, using her mother’s recipes and her own memories to draw upon. Aged just 25 and having lost her mother, trial and error and the assistance of her then mother-in-law proved successful. (A tradition also says that Belgian pies can help new brides break the ice with their in-laws.) The task itself was made less time-consuming because Gina had access to food processors instead of a hand grinder to prepare large quantities of apples. However, her mother’s recipe did not cut corners when it came to the quality of its ingredients. She told me: “It contains real butter, cream, eggs, active cake yeast and vanilla. No substitutes or imitations. The crust is thin, fillings thick, and the toppings go all the way to the crust, leaving just enough filling so you can tell what kind of pie it is.”

Like all local foodways, each Belgian pie will be the total of their maker, and, as Gina says, they are as unique as the people who make them. There are similarities in the technique, but execution can vary: some bakers prefer a thick crust to a thinner one; some will bake a crust using baking soda, whilst others raise their dough slowly over time. As another Door County resident called Emily Guilette points out in Le Draoulec’s chapter about her Belgian pie (which is made with a raised mashed potato and egg crust, by the way), “who sells frozen Belgian pie crusts?” As things stand, these pies must be made by hand, although sensible locals do pop a few of them in the freezer for when company arrives.

The toppings vary too, although one thing is made absolutely clear: a true Belgian pie must have the cheese spread out towards its edge. I was told most firmly that ‘those that claim they are Belgian pies and then put a small dab of cheese in the middle are so wrong in their claims’ by an impassioned local. According to Gina Wautier, when making the cheese topping, some people will use cream cheese and others cottage cheese sweetened with egg yolks, butter and sugar. The filling underneath the crust of cheese can be prune (sweetened with applesauce) or apple and raisin with a cottage cheese topping, or the pie can be filled with cooked rice topped with whipping cream. Generally, rice-filled pies do not have cheese topping, and the popularity of apple is down to the preponderance of apple orchards in Door County. However, I encountered a recipe for Grandpa Boyen’s Famous Belgian Rice Custard Pie during my own research. This version has a regular pie crust base, and a rice filling poured over a layer of sweetened, cooked prune left au naturel, with no topping of any kind. Apparently, the Grandpa Boyen of the recipe was a Boulanger-Patissier in Belgium before moving to Montana of all places, where he opened a bakery and popularised his pie.

Yet another version was tracked down to a bakery in West Tarentum, Pennsylvania, where the pies had a crust base resembling bread dough in texture and were filled with prune, rice, apricot and raisin. Certainly, bread-like crust sounds similar to the pies made and sold in Kewaunee County, which had the typical ‘Danish pastry’ type. At Marchants Bakery, they still use the traditional recipe, do not describe it as having a typical pie crust’ and offer a variety of fillings: rice, prune, apple, cherry, raisin and poppyseed, Sue Marchant told me, adding, “prune and rice are the best sellers at Kermiss, but for the store and Belgian Days the best seller is cherry.” Door County is also home to thousands of acres of cherry orchards, and both sour and sweet cherries are popular in all kinds of baked goods- not just Belgian pies- although the fruits inclusion is an interesting example of local foodways melding with those European food traditions brought to the USA by the migrants.

The fillings listed by Gina Wautier were all made by her own mother, and “other varieties” (cherry, blueberry, apricot, poppy seed) were discovered by accident in our house.” As she points out when you make batches of 30 – 60 pies, it is hard to be exact on ingredients, remembering “when mom would have extra dough and cottage cheese left she would send one of us kids to the store to get a can of Wilderness pie filling to “use up” the extras to save on waste. It really was a great combination.”

Wautier started teaching pie-making classes in 2009 and is now based at Saint Norbert College Language Services Program alongside Karen Stillman, who assists in the three hours each class runs. Each participant is asked about their Belgian heritage (if they have one). “A common theme in these stories is that they remember their moms and grandmas making the pies but were not allowed in the kitchen to learn how.” It seems that such a labour-intensive process, where bulk-baking is involved, might be less conducive to parent and child baking, I wonder. The classes offer an insight into how these pies are baked, too, in several batches of ten pies per batch. “I have played with my mom’s recipe to bring it down to a manageable amount, she says. “Following my directions, it is easy enough to make 5 pies at a time of one kind in a 2-hour time frame. The rising of the dough is what takes time. One 2 oz. cake of yeast will make 10 pies.” Wautier demonstrates how to make the dough and uses the slow rising time to teach participants how to make the filling and toppings before dividing them into two groups for their hands-on part of the lesson. Everyone gets to take home a couple of pies. They all have great fun.

What would your mother think if she could see you now? I asked Gina.

“I think my mom would be very pleased to know that since I started teaching, nearly 150 people (young and old) have learned from us. Also, my skills are used for baking pies for various non-profits and benefits. Over $1,500 combined has profited for charities,” she replies. “Yes, I have a passion for pies. However, I have yet to teach my own children the art. Maybe I should make that another goal!”

The Marchant Bakery is also concerned about the future of Belgian cuisine and is taking steps to ensure the skills required to bake these pies are handed down: “We need to keep our bakers passing the recipe on to the new staff if we want it to continue,” Sue Marchant told me. “We make and have in store many old recipes of different products from the mother country, and yes, I would say we are very proud of our heritage here in Brussels and Namur.”

Door County tourist information.

Further reading:

Laatsch, W. G., and C. F. Calkins. “Belgians in Wisconsin,” in A. G. Noble (ed.), To Build in a New Land: Ethnic Landscapes in North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, pp. 195–210.

Le Draoulec, Pascal. American Pie, Harper Collins, 2002 pp189-195

Martin, Xavier. “The Belgians of Northeast Wisconsin” in Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1895, pp. 375–396.

Pecore Waso, Thomas. Good Seeds: a Menominee Food Memoir. Wisconsin Historical Society Press. 2016

The Native American history of Door County.

Belgian Pies on Sites and Stories

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