With a passion for sustainable food, wood-fired ovens, and midcoast Maine, Jessica Shepard is proud to bring you The Uproot Pie Co.,  a mobile wood-fired pizza oven.

 

A 2004 graduate of Western Culinary Institute in Portland, OR, Jessica spent her immediate years after school baking in wood-fired ovens from a small town in North Carolina to the big city of Portland Oregon.  In Flat Rock, NC she set up in an old chicken shack (fixed up a bit of course) in the back of the bakery and set to spending hours upon hours watching and learning from owner/baker Scott Unfried.  Later the bakery expanded to a restaurant where Jessica shifted gears to pastry chef and created the dessert menu for West First, a wood-fired restaurant.

  

A year and a half later she traveled back to Portland, OR and connected with a mobile wood-fired pizza vendor Mark Doxteder of Tastebud where she learned you can put just about anything in a wood-fired oven!  Jessica was hired as a full-time bagel, pizza, and pita baker for many of the Farmers Markets around Portland.  Inspired by Mark's approach of bringing the ingredients straight back to the kitchen from the market, Jess knew she had found a way to bake that really resonated with her.  

 

Thanking Mark and everyone at Tastebud, she journeyed back to midcoast Maine where she was raised by the sea.  Heading into her third summer in the Rockland area she decided to take things into her own hands and with the creative talents of a local artist and sculptor, Andy White built a mobile wood-fired oven for the summer market season, catering, and local festivals here in the midcoast.  Embracing The Uproot Pie Co. she is moving forward into a forever mobile life here in Rockland!