Brenda Hopkin used to hate making pie dough. But that was before she became pastry chef for the Lion House, where more than 35,000 pies are made each year.

With 19 years of experience there, Hopkin has a sure-fire recipe as well as a lot of techniques and tips for making a perfect pie crust. She's sharing these, and more than 100 other recipes, in her new book, "Lion House Bakery."

The Lion House, named for the reclining stone lion perched above the porch, was once the home of Brigham Young. Owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the ground level is now the Pantry, where hot lunches are served cafeteria-style to the public. More than 1.5 million rolls and 20,000 cakes are made annually in the bakery. It supplies all the baked goods for the Nauvoo Cafe, and the pies and the cookies for all of Temple Square Hospitality, including The Roof and The Garden restaurants.

Although some of these recipes have been shared in previous popular cookbooks such as "Lion House Classics" and "Lion House Christmas," Hopkin said this book focuses on the bakery items, as well as some of Hopkin's favorite at-home recipes and winners in a couple of Lion House contests.

The book comes with a DVD of Hopkin demonstrating how to make pie crust and those melt-in-your-mouth Lion House rolls, with all her tips and techniques.

"I hope it will make it easier for those ladies and younger girls who have never cooked, that they won't be afraid to try making them, because they can be guided along," she said.

In her experience, making a yeast dough and pie-making are two of the most challenging types of baked goods for home cooks. But the Lion House pie dough recipe is easy to work with, she said.

"It's easy to work with and doesn't crack and fall apart, but it's nice and flaky," Hopkin said. That's thanks to four different kinds of fat — lard, butter, shortening and margarine. Yes, all in one recipe.

"It takes the properties of all four to make a really good pie crust," Hopkin said. "People gasp when I tell them about the lard, but that's what makes it so flaky and easy to work with. I say, treat yourself to a really good piece of pie once in awhile instead of all that junk out there."

Hopkin was being interviewed by phone from the Deseret Book outlet in Littleton, Colo. The Lion House Bakery in Salt Lake City sends frozen rolls, pies and cookies to some of Deseret Book's satellite locations such as Littleton, as well Chandler, Ariz., and Rexburg and Ammon, Idaho. They are baked and sold on-site, and Hopkin visits periodically "to make sure everything is being baked of the same quality as you would have at the Lion House itself."