Welcome to Ready-to-Roll Dough, the handcrafted premium roll-it-yourself dough from Rustic Tart. We are proudly handmade with love, in service to your own piemaking ambitions, and we hope that we are empowering you to bake things you love for the people you love. Whether you are an accomplished pie-maker who simply does not have the time to do everything from scratch, or a newbie who wants to be able to bake with consistent results, I hope you think of me as just your kitchen assistant.

My beginnings are always surprising to people who meet me. I didn’t go to culinary school or take pastry courses. I didn’t even originally set out to be a professional cook, let alone pie and dough maker. I’m just a kid from Iowa who learned the art of pie from her mom. It was something I did for myself and my family, as stress relief, for gifts, for the pure pleasure of piemaking. I was actually launching my own interior design business when the recession hit. I found myself panicked and overwhelmed so I did what I do to sort things out. I made pie. I made pie for an entire day hoping that each pie would lead me to the answers of how to handle an uncertain economy when I had started a business that is fundamentally about disposable income spending. At the end of the day, without any clear messages from the universe, but a kitchen full of pies, I found myself on the playground of my daughters’ school. I told every Mom I was making pie for my mental health, and that we’d all need a lot of pie to live through this. And in a flash, almost offhand, I said they should call me if they needed a pie.

To my surprise, they did and the next thing I knew I had a pie company, Rustic Tart.

Over the years I began to realize I’d become the gentle ear for customers to confess all the reasons why they weren’t making pie. If their pies and especially their crust were like mine, they’d be making pie all the time, they said. If they had the time. If they’d taken the time to learn from their grandmother. Or, they would admit that they never wanted to make the dough or didn’t have time to make the dough or were never successful at making the dough. It took years for me to realize I too have had every problem over the years in making pie dough as those who “confessed”. I’ve been my own best case study. I was in the wrong business. It wasn’t about the pie it was about the dough! Anyone could buy a pie. I wanted to see my subscribers and all pie lovers making the pies they’d shared, pies from their childhood, their grandmother’s, their dreams and imaginations. Ready-to-Roll Dough was born. I listened to people who were buying the pies they wanted to be making and heard that the only thing that was stopping them was being daunted by dough! Being able to offer customers premium pre-made dough, allows them to reclaim the art of baking with confidence, and the disk format isn’t restrictive to users like other store-bought options. My customers are not locked into a formed shape, application, size of pie plate or how to use. It’s a blank canvas for pies, hand pies, slab pies, cookies, crackers, pop- tarts, sweet, savory. Ready-to-Roll Dough means no limitations and full bragging rights!

The fundamental differences in our products are that they are produced with only the finest ingredients, and are all handmade, not commercially manufactured. European-style butter, King Arthur flour, no additives or preservatives, a frozen product that is always at the ready makes our crusts the crusts you would make yourself, if you had the time. Our dough artisans make small batches by hand, because dough requires your senses. If you are manufacturing dough with machines, you’ll miss cues and “conversation” with the dough. You need to be able to feel what’s happening. No two batches are the same. This is why pastry is so hard for people who don’t make it regularly, you have to do it enough to learn the language of the crusts, so that you can pick up on their clues and learn how to get a consistent result. I love that when you get my dough, you can often still see the mark of human hands in the disk, you know you are getting a true artisanal product.

As I grow my company, as proud as I am of the products, I’m most proud that my daughters have been along for the ride since day one. That they have seen an idea put into action and grow into something tangible. I’ve always thought that if the only thing that ever comes of Rustic Tart and Ready-to-Roll Dough is that my girls observed an idea grow into a company, I will have been successful. That they are learning that if you put in hard work for what you believe in and persevere, you can see your dreams become real. That to me is the greatest mark of success.

I hope you will follow us on social media and tag us in your photos, we love to see what you are making with our dough!

From my heart, to my hands, to your kitchen...happy rolling!

Stephanie