Baker turns grandma's pie recipes into popular Grayslake shop

Michael Wollner hand-baked about 500 pies to open his Grayslake bakery.

The pies sold in three hours.

“I was like, ‘Now what?'” remembered Wollner of Lake Villa.

He stayed up all night — about 48 hours straight all told — to bake about 200 more pies for the next day. Those sold in 30 minutes.

“It's kind of nuts to be honest,” Wollner said. “I just didn't think it would take off like that.”

First opened in early December, Wollner's bakery, Bake Share, 837 Center St., now has limited hours simply so Wollner has time to bake. He averages about 150 to 300 pies a day. The bakery's hours are 10 a.m. “until we run out” Wednesday through Friday.

“We never made it past noon in December,” Wollner said.

He's had to hire a couple of employees since then but still has a hand in making every single pie, each one pieced together using his grandmother's handwritten recipes.

And each one with a story behind it.

He remembers well baking beside his grandmother, the late Winne Merfield.

“She's the reason I'm ultimately doing this,” he said. “My grandma, I give her all the credit. ... She just knew what she was doing. There's no question. Her pecan pie is one of the best, if not the best pecan pie you're ever going to eat, hands down. It's stupid good. It's just ridiculous.”

Pies at Bake Share change weekly depending on the day and the season. Wollner offers more than 30 varieties in both full-size 9-inch pies and smaller 5-inch pies — all with clever names and many with decorations on top that Wollner personally crafts out of dough.

Just Peachy Pie. Blueies Pie. Rhubarb-A-Rebarb Pie. Cherry Bomb Pie. 2 is Better than 1 Pear Pie. Merangutang Pie. Smooth as Silk Pie.

The list goes on and on. Customers also can choose Baker's Choice, an assortment of 10 small “co-pielets” selected by Wollner.

His best-selling pie? “It literally changes daily,” he said. “Lately, cherry has been going like gangbuster.”

February's featured pie is Coconut Dream Pie. And the Home Run Apple Pie is always a hit, Wollner said.

He named that one after a memory with his other grandmother, Lois Wollner, who had asked him to climb her apple tree and throw down apples. She'd bake with the good ones and put the bad ones in a bucket.

They'd take that bucket to an empty field across the street where she'd pitch the bad apples at him to hit with a baseball bat. Then they'd go inside to bake.

“One day, she said, ‘Which do you want? Apple crisp or an apple pie?' I said, ‘Grandma, I want both,'” he remembered.

There wasn't time to bake both, so they put crisp on top of the pie. That turned into Home Run Apple Pie.

Another favorite, Grandma Winne's Orange Drop Cookies, always are on the menu.

“That Orange Drop Cookie recipe literally takes every bowl in my kitchen,” Wollner said.

It's not just about a list of ingredients, Wollner said. It's knowing when and how to combine them and how long to let them sit. Baking with his grandmother's recipes for years, he started perfecting them out of boredom during the pandemic.

His children, 17-year-old Caitlin and 13-year-old Kiley, encouraged him to sell them.

“I thought they were saying, ‘Dad, your pies are the best,' because I'm their dad,” he said.

He took some to the farmers market in 2020. They sold out immediately and he quickly built a fan base.

“The pies are absolutely delicious, but what I like is Michael and his customer service and what a great person he is,” said Lee Orlov of Volo, who started buying Wollner's pies weekly on Saturdays at the farmers market in downtown Grayslake.

Wollner still sells his pies at that market on Saturdays and at a farmers market in Crystal Lake on Sundays.

“They taste like homemade pies you would get from grandma's oven,” said Orlov, whose favorites so far are the pecan, pumpkin and Key lime pies.

Before the farmers markets, Wollner worked as a restaurant manager, commercial writer and other positions. He soon became a baker full time.

“Within a year and a half, I quit my job and was just doing farmers markets,” he said. “Within two and a half years, I had my own bakery. It went off like a rocket.

“I can't explain it. I didn't expect it to be like this. I thought it'll be fun. Let's open a shop, sell 10 to 15 pies a day. That's enough for me,” he said. “Yeah, I was wrong.”

One day, he said he will have to let others bake his pies on their own in order to keep up with sales.

But, he said: “How do you teach somebody something that took you an entire lifetime to figure out? It's not easy.”

Since opening his bakery, Wollner has partnered with other businesses, selling their products along with his pies in his shop. Among those partners are Janie's Mill, Roedger Bros. Blueberries, Middleton Preserves and Sugar & Sage Gourmet Cookies.

“We've made a home,” he said. “We bake and share. I've made friends with all these people. That's what it is. That's this space.”