Mama and grandma seemed to pull food out of the air.

In the eyes of the little girl who’d looked on in the kitchens of her native Crimea as the two women whipped up loaves of freshly-baked bread, savory piroshkis, and other Russian and Ukrainian specialties without recipes, they were masters.

“It was like magic to me,” Oksana Lusnikova recalled of watching the women at work. “I couldn’t understand how they did it without recipes. It took me more than 20 years to learn.”

But learn she did. Six years ago, Lusnikova began tempting locals into the Pie Style, her original, pint-sized bakery at 1111 East Main St. to sample the sweet, the mouth-watering, and everything-in-between that savored of her native land.

Thumbing her nose at the pandemic in 2020, she grew a following with her napoleon cake, her breads, and her cheesecake, her fancy cupcakes, and her pies with pumpkin and spinach and cheese, all of it made on site, and every morsel from the ovens, none of it from frozen or prepackaged stuff.

An example of the offerings at Pie Style Bakery in Auburn. Courtesy photo

The shop was thriving, Lusnikova said, but when it proved too small, and its two ovens continued to cause serious heat problems in the small space, she recognized the time had come to find a bigger place.

So, she packed up and moved downtown. Today, only the address at West Main Street directly across from Auburn City Hall, and the size of the Pie Style Bakery — originally 350 square feet of space, but now expanding into an interior close to 3,000 square feet — have changed. So when the bakery reopens on an as-yet-unspecified August or early September day, the goodies, mixed and baked every day, will continue as always to be cooked with the minimum amount of additives, along with organic sugar, unbleached flour and other healthful ingredients.

As one may guess, this local entrepreneur is busy as a bee nowadays with the thousand tedious tasks any business owner must wrap up before opening day. Like visits to the health department, or to the city for an-depth consultation with a building official.

The days will be long, starting at 5 a.m., with mixing and baking continuing to 9 a.m, and sometimes until noon. But she’s used to it. A year before she left Crimea with her husband, Pavel, and their two sons to be near Pavel’s grandmother who had already been in the United States for 20 years, the family owned and operated a restaurant. Once here, Pavel got a construction job.

At first, Lusnikova was homesick for her family back in her homeland, the only world she had ever known.

“I just wanted to go home. It was not so good for me,” she said.

She learned to speak English in classes for would-be business owners at Green River College six years ago.

“We shared about food rules and everything. It was very interesting for me, and useful for everybody. That’s when I knew I wanted to open a bakery and share my culture with everybody. You want to do something for people, not just for yourself,” she said.

One question is whether the city’s plans for downtown rejuvenation were a selling point for the bakery’s new location. Emerson Folker, an economic development coordinator for Auburn, explained that, while not part of the city’s official plans, it is a welcome addition.

“We couldn’t be more excited for the Pie Style Bakery to open,” Folker said. “Although her opening wasn’t written into the city’s plans for our downtown to become a creative district, it certainly is a welcome addition to our downtown. We are looking to bring businesses to Auburn that would complement our downtown vision. We would love to have exciting retail spaces to shop at, eateries to indulge in, and entertainment businesses to take our families to. Pie Style Bakery is, and will continue to be, a leading example of the excellence that is Auburn, and we are all so excited for her grand opening,”

Pie Style Bakery, Folker noted, is one of many businesses in Auburn that have this in common — that that they started in a smaller space here, were successful, but needed to expand, and chose to do it in Auburn. Stephanie Cox recently expanded from Children’s Dance Theater into a larger space also just blocks away from her original studio space in Auburn. Circle Creek also expanded into a much larger space recently — and the list goes on.

“It’s something I’m excited to see as an economic development coordinator – businesses continuing to choose Auburn,” Folker said.