Ohio pastry chef Angela Pinkerton won the 2011 James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef award as executive pastry chef at Eleven Madison Park. Today, she runs Pinkerton's bakery in Kingston (Hudson Valley), following her Californian projects Theorita and Pie Society, celebrated for their signature pies.
Born and raised in Ohio, Pinkerton studied biology at Kent State University but, while working part-time in a university bakery, she discovered that she was more passionate about the chemistry of leavened products than microscopes. She graduated in pastry making from L'Académie de Cuisine (Maryland), then joined the team at the Ritz-Carlton Arlington.
In 2007, she moved to New York City as a pastry cook at Eleven Madison Park; in September 2009, Daniel Humm promoted her to executive pastry chef. The accolades followed: StarChefs Rising Star 2010, Outstanding Pastry Chef at the James Beard Awards 2011, and inclusion among Dessert Professional's “Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America” (2012).
After eight years, in 2014, she moved to San Francisco: first to Craftsman & Wolves, then as pastry chef at Che Fico. With her team, she opened the diner-bakery Theorita in 2018, famous for its seasonal pies, which closed at the end of the year due to a change in the use of the space.
During the 2020 lockdown, she launched the Pie Society pop-up in Berkeley: modern “grandma pies” that became a cult hit and earned enthusiastic reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle. The bakery closed in April 2023, at the end of the lease, following the chef's decision.
In December 2024, Pinkerton returned to the East Coast, opening Pinkerton's Bakery & Café in a former 1920s Art Deco station in Kingston, New York: layered croissants, chicken pot pie with shallot biscuit, Arkansas Black apple pie, and a line of pre-order pies that pay homage to the Midwest.
