Some context to begin: I've been going to the State Fair every year since I moved back to Dallas in 2014 - my friends (and now spouse) and I have been regularly getting season tickets for it every year since a bit after that. I became more aware of the Creative Arts competitions around 2019 when a friend entered a crocheted item and won an honorable mention ribbon, but didn't really give too much thought to the cooking side of things until last year. At the beginning of 2025 I started baking sourdough and pizza at home, and when season tickets went on sale this summer I was poking around the website, stumbled across the cooking competition page, and thought, well, if I'm planning to be there at least 3-4 times over the course of the fair, why not enter a few competitions for fun and see how it goes?

The main point of this post is not only to reflect on my own personal experience with this year's cooking competitions but also to provide some useful info & random tips that aren't readily available in the official handbooks and pages on the State Fair's website. After I signed up in July, I asked a ton of questions (all the Creative Arts staff that answered my many emails were super patient and helpful) and scoured online resources (such as this subreddit!) for answers. One of the only relevant things I could find available publicly was this 2+ year old post, which didn't have a ton of information, so I thought a more comprehensive breakdown of all the things I learned throughout the process this year might be helpful for someone in the future.

I also really enjoyed & highly recommend reading this write-up from a few weeks ago by WFAA digital content producer Rachel Behrndt, who, like me, was a State Fair cooking competition newbie this year.

Signing Up

• Very straightforward, especially for the normal competitions (bring your pre-cooked/baked dish to the fair) vs. the cook-offs (cooking on-site in the Creative Arts Competition Kitchen). The online registration process is extremely seamless. I believe you can still mail in your registrations, but creating an account on their registration website, following the steps to pick your competitions, and submitting payments for your entries is much more convenient online in this day and age.
• After looking through the schedule and coming up with some ideas of which competitions and categories I might like to enter, I picked the Bread competition (2 categories, sourdough & loaf, white), Cooking with Cheese (1 category, cheesecake), and the Pizza Cook-off (3 categories, deep-dish, vegetable, and dessert). The only competition of the three that I ended up needing to take off work for was the Pizza Cook-off since that was on a Friday; the other two were on Saturday and Sunday respectively.
• Cook-offs are a little different because there are only 16 ovens in the competition kitchen, so space is limited. I had to enter a lottery to be selected for the pizza cook-off. The lottery entry form is on a separate page unrelated to the Creative Arts registration website. I received an email mid-July informing me that I was selected to participate, and to let them know if I had to drop out so they could provide another prospective competitor the opportunity (more on that later). Unlike online registration for the other two competitions, you pay the entry fee on the day of the competition.
• The fee for each category you enter is between $2-$3 depending on the competition.
• Unlike the craft competitions which are judged prior to the fair, the judging for the cooking competitions happen day of, so you can still sign up for individual competitions up till the morning of the event itself. After having so much fun in the three I signed up for early, I definitely considered entering more this year, but I couldn't justify taking the time off work :P Maybe I'll plan better next year!

Logistics

• So obviously you need a ticket to the fair to be able to get in and participate in the competitions each day. This does add up quickly if you don't have a season pass and you're participating in multiple competitions. That was a non-issue for me, since I get a season pass every year anyway, but I can see it being a sticking point since the fair only gets more and more expensive as the years pass.
• However, I'm a huge fan of the Three Contest Program - essentially if you enter three different competitions (not categories, but basically three separate days of competition) you're eligible for a free season pass for the next year. If you're only entering one category per competition that's basically (3x$2) $6 for a pass next year that usually retails at around $40. Really incentivizes you to keep entering every year, haha.
• The first weekend I competed, my spouse and I took the DART to the fair. I quickly learned that even on the day where I was only entering one thing, it was very annoying to be juggling a bunch of kitchen equipment across the fairgrounds. For the pizza cook-off I knew I had to bring way more stuff, so I was able to borrow a friend's wagon to lug everything in and we opted to park near Gate 2 to shorten the distance between where we entered and the Creative Arts building.
• In years past, I'm told that cooking competitors were allowed to enter the fairgrounds at 9AM, an hour before the fair opens to the public (10AM). Earlier versions of this year's competition handbook still say check-in for entries is from 9-10:30AM. However, we got an email a few weeks before the fair began that everything was getting shifted back an hour to match general admission to the fairgrounds. Things got a little chaotic, especially during the bread competition, since there were so many people participating mixed in with all the normal fairgoers who were interested in seeing what all the commotion was about. We'll see what happens next year!
• When in doubt about whether a specific recipe meets the criteria for a particular category, just email the Creative Arts staff! I entered shokupan (Japanese milk bread) for the loaf, white competition and sourdough focaccia for the sourdough competition. Wasn't sure if focaccia was acceptable (and most people did make standard boules for the sourdough competition) but the nice email I received in reply assured me that it was.

Bread Competition (Day 1: September 27)

• I arrived around 10AM with my plastic-wrapped breads. Being a newbie, I had no idea we were supposed to bring platters to display our creations on. Fortunately I met some very nice ladies in line while checking in; one of them grabbed me some wet wipes and the other lent me a disposable cardboard tray she wasn't using so I could at least display my shokupan. At the check-in table, one of the staffers was able to find me a cutting board upon which to put my focaccia. To echo Rachel's WFAA piece, everyone involved in the cooking competitions, from the staff to the competitors, were all super nice and encouraging. It really felt like a big family gathering, considering how many people come back year after year to compete.
• Second mistake: I unthinkingly discarded the plastic bags I brought my breads in after checking my food in at the table. YOU WILL HAVE LEFTOVERS! Fortunately there are enough booths giving out free totes that I was able to deposit my leftover breads into a Walmart one after the competition, but it was very funny to be walking out of the building holding two halves of a focaccia on a cardboard cutting board.
• Third mistake: while conversing with the lady who helped me check in, I inquired when I should be back to pick up my entries. She told me some time around 2:30, and I think she said it in a casual way that made it seem like not a big deal if I was a little late. My spouse and I spent most of the morning doing some of our usual favorite fair things, and I ended up missing the awards being announced. When I rolled back up at 2:45, a very nice gentleman that recognized me from the line told me to go and collect my ribbons because I had won 1st and 3rd in the categories I entered but had no idea, since by the time I got back to the Creative Arts building it was a madhouse of everyone trying to pick up their stuff. So - you don't have to stay the whole time, but try to be a little more aware than I was :')

Cooking with Cheese Competition (Day 2: September 28)

• I was slightly more prepared this day, and there were way less people participating. Combined with it being early Sunday on the first weekend of the fair, it was so much less crowded both inside and outside the building.
• I didn't end up winning anything this day, but we did stay to watch more of the judging and the announcement of awards. It was super fun cheering for everyone who got a ribbon, and we had a great time with the emcee of the cooking demos coming over from the other side of the building and doing a few trivia giveaways with us.
• I entered a Japanese-style yuzu basque cheesecake for the cheesecake category of the day's competition, and immediately noticed that everyone else's cheesecakes were decorated so beautifully! When I went back to the competition handbook, I saw that the cheese competition was judged on appearance, creativity AND taste. So really my tip here is to just be a better reader than me and make note of all the judging criteria for the specific competitions you're entering. I am not a decorator and care more about flavor than aesthetics, but that was obviously important for judging this day.

Pizza Cook-off (Day 5: October 3)

• I packed so much stuff to bring with me on this day, lol. I was already up early making dough for my pizzas and doing any last minute ingredient prep, so I also triple checked that I had everything I wanted to bring squared away. The fair had oven thermometers for each oven (electric, goes up to 500 on the digital panel, but mostly hovered closer to 475* most of the day according to the thermometers) so I didn't need to bring those, but everything else I packed ended up being useful.
• For obvious reasons, you aren't allowed to bring your own knives onto the fairgrounds. The cooking competitions are sponsored by Cutco, but the very nice staffers cutting pieces for each judge tried to use a normal pizza slicer on the first pizza I presented (I made Detroit-style for everything) and had a pretty hard time. When I checked in my second pizza I mentioned that I usually a large Chinese cleaver to cut my pizzas (they didn't have one, but used a heftier Cutco knife after that).
• We parked in the lot near gate 2 around 9:15AM. I wasn't sure if we'd just have to wait around until 10AM but the staff at gate 2 saw my giant wagon of food and actually let us in early, which was nice. Not all the doors to the Creative Arts building were open yet so my spouse and one of the friends who came with us walked around to an open door to let us in with the wagon.
• Check-ins for the pizza competition weren't until 10AM so we just sat in the white chairs and waited as more competitors trickled in. At check-in you also draw your oven assignment - I drew oven 9 and immediately started preheating it with my pizza stone inside.
• I think 11 people showed up to compete out of the 16 that were drawn from the lottery. I made friends with another competitor at the table next to me and she mentioned that an email had gotten sent out the previous night seeing if anyone else wanted to step in and take a spot; I guess a handful of people dropped out pretty last minute. You don't have to pay the $3 per category entry fee until the morning of the event so maybe to prevent something like this from happening in the future, fee collection could happen earlier? Not sure how the logistics of that would work.
• There were four judges split into two tables of two each, and five pizza categories which were split amongst the two tables. We were told to bake our pizzas in any order we wanted and bring up both the pizza and its corresponding recipe to a table in the middle of the competition area when we were finished. I went deep dish -> vegetable -> dessert. It was cool being so close and watching the judges try everyone's dishes, though I tried not to pay attention too closely and just get on with the next pizza once one was finished, lol.
• Brian Reinhart of D Magazine fame was one of the judges for the pizza competition! It was cool to meet someone whose work I read a lot :)
• One contestant had forgotten to print out her recipes, so she spent a solid chunk of that time writing the recipes down by hand onto a sheet of paper. It was really nice that she was still allowed to submit despite not having the print-outs, but it did mean that her pizzas sat out for at least half an hour to an hour before they were evaluated by the judges. Don't forget your recipes!
• We started assembly at 10:30AM and had until 1PM to finish cooking. I was pretty much done by noon (maybe the first one finished?) but others pushed until the very last minute. After the cooking phase was over we were asked to leave the central area and take a seat on the white chairs to wait for judging to finish.
• One of the fun things about the judging process is that there's the winners for each category, and then the first place winners get judged again for best in show. So when you're watching from afar, you can tell which entries won first in their category because at some point they'll be taken from the tables again for the second round of tasting. It was definitely very thrilling to see two of my pizzas get pulled for the second round - and I ended up winning best in show for my entry in the deep-dish category!
• When I was picking up my pizzas at the end, the judges and staffers were all super nice and friendly. There are definitely also people wandering around the competition area looking to score some free food from competitors, lol. We aren't allowed to give anything out (probably for liability reasons?) but fortunately I'd brought ice packs and there is limited fridge space in the competition kitchen if you want to store leftovers before taking it home when you leave the fair.
• Aside from ribbons and prize money, best in show winners got a few little extra gifts. For the pizza cook-off that was a Cutco pizza cutter and peeler, as well as one parking pass valid for Gate 10/11 parking at any other day of the fair this year. We were planning on coming back later in the month so it was nice to have a free parking day.
• First place ribbon in any category also means your name gets posted on the wall behind the white chairs are in the Creative Arts building!
• If you win any kind of money, you'll receive a check in the mail with the total winnings after the fair is over.

Final Thoughts

• I was super wiped especially after the pizza cook-off but it was an amazing experience to be at the fair and surrounded by other people who are also really passionate about cooking and eating. Just wandering around the Creative Arts building on the day of the Cooking with Cheese competition, we got to talk to a few of the judges near the jarred display who gave us some insight into how the canning/pickling/jam/etc part of the cooking competition is judged. (Basically over a week nonstop of eating and judging in August... all this just makes it clear to me that I could never hack it as a food judge, haha.)
• We'll see what the schedule looks like next year but I'm already looking forward to entering again! Best in Show winners are not allowed to participate in the same contest the following year, but I already have a list of potential recipes that I'd love to enter in other competitions. And I'll have a free season pass ready :)
• The community of people that participate all seem really nice and encouraging. Of course it's fun to win but it's also cool to see what kinds of creative things everyone comes up with. I definitely encourage anyone with a passing interest to participate. I was pretty intimidated at first (the bread being day 1 was overwhelming just from sheer scope - I think there were over 300 entries!) but I had a great time and can't wait for next year.

Sorry this got so long but if you're curious about anything or have any specific questions let me know and I'll try my best to answer!