"There goes my chance at it," thought Stan Paul when he heard the honors for the "most All American" pie being awarded to another baker.

The next thing he heard was his own name announced as winner of Best in Show.

This was at the Urban Apple-festival pie-baking contest at the Union Project in Highland Park Nov. 8.

Mr. Paul's entry in a field of 30 pies was a half-lard, half-butter, two-crust pie, enclosing Dawson Orchards' Stayman-Winesap apples.

The retired Department of Energy economist and his wife had breezed in from Bethesda, Md., the Sunday before Election Day to visit their kids in Regent Square. Daughter-in-law April Randle greeted him with a request for two apple pies for her election party Tuesday night. She mentioned she'd also entered him in the Saturday pie contest.

Mr. Paul, 81, has made many a pie.

Raising a brood of five in Utah, his mom decided the three boys needed to know "the rudiments of cooking." This included bread-baking -- "We never ate Wonderbread" -- canning and pie-baking. His dad owned a fruit farm, so pie fillings were at hand.

When he moved east in the '50s, Mr. Paul got serious about cooking. He "worked through James Beard and Julia Child. Whatever anyone termed pretty difficult whetted my appetite."

He's the official pie and birthday-cake baker in a multi-generational family that loves to cook and cook together, a testament to Mr. Paul's zestful teaching skill.

Mr. Paul's pie is an American classic based on a Craig Claiborne recipe in the 1971 New York Times International Cookbook. For the lard/butter pastry, he prefers King Arthur all-purpose flour and uses a pastry scale to measure. The apples are Stayman-Winesap, "as stipulated in the original Claiborne recipe" -- unless he can find Northern Spy, which he likes a little better.

The quality of the lard makes a difference. He prefers the "nice, clean taste" of the product he's ordered for years in 2-pound buckets from specialty butchers John F. Martins & Sons in Stevens, Pa. (717-733-1527). He read about the Lancaster County supplier in a New York Times story. (See ordering note below.)

He thinks an old-fashioned pastry blender does a better job cutting in fats than food processors: "Processors do the mixing too fast. I am anything but gentle. I really go at it. I rotate the bowl while plunging the pastry blender back and forth into the mix until it looks and feels like coarse meal, with small lumps of butter. When you roll the dough out, you can see small smears of butter. Makes it flaky.

"What made rolling the dough challenging in April's kitchen is that at home I had a marble stone that I stuck in the freezer. Rolling dough on that cold surface was a piece of cake. I didn't have it here. Since lard crusts soften more quickly, it was in and out the fridge to firm the dough as I rolled it out."

He's tweaked his pie this way and that and always comes back to this version. The judges saw why. Check out the secret to the pie's juiciness.

(Note: Martins no longer mail-orders lard except to "longtime customers," but they supply McGinnis Sisters markets, which can order the lard for Pittsburgh bakers, Martins spokesman Dan Hornberger said.)

Pay attention to some of Stan Paul's tricks here, find yourself some tart fall apples and a funnel, and you too will have a winning pie.

For the pastry

• 2 1/2 cups or 11.5 ounces all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 cup or 1 stick butter, chilled hard
• 1/2 cup or 4 ounces lard, chilled till solid
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

For the filling

• 6 medium Stayman-Winesap apples (or Nothern spy), about 6 cups sliced
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons instant tapioca
• 3 tablespoons butter
• More sugar: scant 1/4 cup sugar for sprinkling

Special equipment needed

• Pastry blender and small funnel

Preparing pastry

Combine flour and salt in a medium bowl. (Mr. Paul is fussy about chilling the fats and also, "when I'm in the mood," chills the flour to keep the fats firmer.) Cube chilled butter into 1/4 inch dice and replace in refrigerator to firm up. Cut lard into small chunks (it will be softer than butter) and chill to firm.

With pastry blender cut chilled fats into the flour and salt mixture until it looks like coarse meal. Tossing and mixing with a spatula, drizzle in 1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water, until a rough ball is formed.

Divide into two balls, one slightly larger, and flatten each slightly. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill while preparing apples.

Preparing filling

Peel and slice Stayman apples. Place in bowl with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix and allow to macerate and accumulate juice for a full 2 hours, "but not much more or apple texture will suffer."

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Roll out dough 1/8 inch thick or less into a 13-inch circle and lay into 9-inch pie pan. Drain apples, pouring juice into a saucepan with tapioca and butter. Set aside.

Fill bottom crust with apples. Roll out top circle of pastry. Moisten edge of bottom crust, lay on top pastry and crimp. Make two holes in top crust "the size of dimes." Mr. Paul often cuts a smiley face grin beneath the "eye holes." Scatter sugar on top.

Bake pie 45 minutes. Boil saucepan contents one minute. While pie is still steaming, place funnel in one hole, push down and "quite slowly" pour in hot juice mixture, alternating between two holes.

-- Stan Paul, Bethesda, Md.