CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — Lyndsey’s Bakery in downtown Circleville always boasted the largest pumpkin pie (six foot in diameter), but a group of vegetable growers and a few engineers put their talents together and wanted to see if they could bake one even bigger.

Mission accomplished. And although they fell shy of setting a new mark in the Guiness Book of World Records, the group simply wanted to see if they had the baker’s touch.

“Lyndsey’s Bakery has had a hand in this, too, but a group of us guys worked on this project the past 14 months,” said Joe Speakman, one of the creators of the monstrous pumpkin pie. “It took four of us about four hours just to put the pan together and took another three hours to make the crust. Then it took eight hours to cook the pie.”

The pie has a diameter of 14 feet and enough ingredients to destroy any low-carb diet. Included in this monster pie are 360 pounds of sugar, 795 pounds of pumpkin, 60 pounds of powdered milk, three pounds of salt, five pounds of spice, 30 pounds of corn starch, 201 pounds evaporated milk, 60 pounds of eggs and 75 gallons of water. The pie was baked for eight hours at 350 degrees.

“The idea of making the pie was just to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the show,” Speakman said, “and put smiles on peoples faces.”

Engineers in town designed the steel pie pan and the metal undercarriage. The pie was baked in an oven that was created using cement blocks, with walls 56 inches high, 16 foot in length and eight feet wide.

“We had to push the pan in that oven, jack up the pie and take the axles off the contraption before putting in the filling,” Speakman said. “We covered the top with sheet metal and added some insulation around the oven.”

A Guiness Book record? Maybe not.

“The record now in place was 15-foot, six inches and was cut and served, and we have no intention of cutting the pie,” Speakman said. “In order to be in the record book it has to be eaten, but after a day or two it’s not safe for consumption.”

This Ohio farm news was published in the Oct. 25, 2006 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.