The pie guy: Since 16, Bill Hart has delighted in pie; now it's his living

If Bill Hart's mother had just relented and baked her teenage son a pie when he asked for it 32 years ago, she might have prevented the obsession that has consumed his life since.

Perhaps therapy is in order. Or a fork and glass of warm milk. For Hart is obsessed with baking pies.

Sweet, smooth Southern ones. Pecan, coconut, sweet potato, bean, tropical key lime and lemon chess pies. Pumpkin pies. Peach cobblers.

Hart even left his day job of selling cars two years ago so he could run a business making and selling pies full time.

Now Hart's Southern Desserts, as it's called, can be found at about two dozen local groceries and restaurants around Seattle, including the Red Apple chain of markets and the Broadway New American Grill on Capitol Hill.

Hart has converted the basement of his Central District home into a bakery, complete with a sparkling industrial oven, several pie racks on rollers and checked floor tiles.

On most days, the whole house carries the heady sweetness of vanilla, pecan, coconut, lime and cinnamon-roasted sweet potatoes.

With moral and a great deal of financial support from third wife Bonita, Hart is taking a gamble that may define him. Or redefine him. In a way, Hart is building his life from scratch. Financial troubles, including bankruptcy, dogged him in the 1990s. He put a previous, part-time dessert business on hold a decade ago.

But at 48, Hart says he's pursuing his lifetime passion 100 percent.

The big question is this: How does an untrained baker armed only with recipes from family and friends learn to make desserts that sell well enough to keep breakfast, lunch and dinner on the table?

"God blesses us all with a talent, and this is mine," Hart says, gesturing with his rubber-gloved hands. Hart's brightly colored, vegetable-print apron fits snugly around his solid frame.

"The time when I am happiest and most at peace is when I'm in that kitchen," he says. "Today, my kitchen is like R&D — research and development."

Hart's ancestors were among the first black clans to settle in Washington after Nelson Arthur Hart migrated from Texas to Roslyn and started mining coal in the late 1800s. An independent, entrepreneurial spirit runs through them. Members of the Hart-Craven family, as they are now known, often ride their own float in local parades, such as Seafair's.

Regardless of family background, small business can be a cruel and unusual punishment for anyone without a good plan. And in Hart's case, business would suffer without good pie.

But so far, those pies have been leading his retail clients to resort to slang to describe them.

"Awesome," chimes Alan Caraco, chef at the grill on Capitol Hill, referring to the tropical chess pie, a tart-like confection containing the traditional corn meal as thickener that hints of key limes, lemons and scandalous amounts of sugar. The pecan pie, which the restaurant also offers? "That's awesome, too," Caraco said.

"The texture, the sweetness, the overall flavor profile — it just hits you from a bunch of different angles," he said.

Red Apple, the Seattle grocery chain based on Beacon Hill, sells Hart's entire line.

But "that lemon pie is the bomb," says owner Lenny Rose, who has known Hart's family for years. "It'll give you a heart attack, I tell you."

Rose describes Hart as "one of the most persistent guys I know."

"He took the business from nothing," Rose said. "He might be the next Famous Amos, who knows?"

Hart didn't have to leave his childhood neighborhood, where he sold candy door-to-door as a schoolboy, to pursue his passion.

That day when Hart was 16, he was so determined to have a pie that he went to his father's house nearby and started preparing his own bean pie with a family friend's recipe.

The bookish self-starter had never baked one before. His older sister Maxcine looked on silently, leaving the prep work to him.

There was no reason to believe the results would turn out edible, let alone divine.

But then: "I ate one slice," Hart says, "and Maxcine ate the rest" of the small pie right in front of him.

"It just happened," Hart says of that first attempt.

Hart will try to convince people that his pies taste good because of all the love and passion he puts into them.

This may be so. He never bakes when he's angry. Maybe it saps the finesse of his mixing. "People always try baking when they're having a bad day," Hart says, shaking his gloved index finger. That's a no-no. "There are some days when I just won't bake."

"Attitude has got to be right," Hart's wife, Bonita, says, playing along. "We can't upset the baker."

But Hart's not being terribly forthcoming.

He eventually admits that he's got secret techniques too. The mixture of ingredients, which are listed in the broadest terms possible on the pie labels, are the result of his own trial-and-error tinkering.

"The seasonings, they do things with time," he says almost mystically. "And they respond differently at different temperatures."

Hart prefers to work alone, waking up around 3 a.m. to get the kitchen ready during the week so he and his staff, mostly relatives, can fill orders.

"Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and says, "Ooh, I know what I can do next!" Bonita says.

Next for Hart, actually, is ice cream. He's testing a bean-pie flavor called "Sweet Bean Supreme." Red Apple's Rose turned breathless recalling the first time he tasted it.

But pies will continue to be Hart's bread and butter for now. He plans to move to a larger location to increase production.

He's laying a foundation for his dreams. It just happens to be a flaky crust.

"The struggle in life is to find your talent," Hart says, "and then to stick with it."

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com.