Pie master

True blue … Dave McNamara takes a bite out of one of his homemade pies, baked out of his own garage. 37299 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI

By Belinda Nolan
BY DAY Dave McNamara earns his living as a truck driver.
But by night he dabbles in the arts of the patisserie.
The Delahey resident was so sick of the taste of supermarket meat pies, he decided to make his own.
It’s not Mr McNamara’s first attempt at pie making.
As a teenager, he worked as an attendant at a milk bar, where he learned the secrets of the art.
When the milk bar burned down, Mr McNamara believed his baking days were over.
But they’d barely begun.
It all began with an innocent request from his son.
“He asked me to make him a pie so I made a batch and he took some to work with him,” Mr McNamara said.
It wasn’t long before the requests starting flooding in.
“I went from making 20 a week to 30, 40, 50 and 60 a week,” Mr McNamara said.
He now churns out between 400-500 pies a week, out of his home garage, which he’s turned into a makeshift bakery.
And he does it all in his spare time.
“I still work full-time as a truck driver,” Mr McNamara said.
“I’ll come home from a shift on a Thursday night and I’ll start making my mince.
“Then on Friday I’ll get cracking with my pastry and all day Saturday I’ll be baking.
“I make pies, pasties and sausage rolls.
“It takes up a lot of my time but I absolutely love it.”
And his neighbours love him.
Not surprisingly, Mr McNamara gets most of his visitors on a Saturday.
“People can smell when I’m baking so they pop round for a pie for lunch,” Mr McNamara said.
His homemade brand, True Blue, will set foodies back just two bucks a pop but the budding chef is hoping the profits will one day earn him a living.
“I’d really like to give up trucking and concentrate on making pies,” Mr McNamara said.
“I guess you could say I’ve found my calling.”
Mr McNmara can be found at 9 Lemco Walk, Delahey.