Markeshia Ricks Photo
Chalk art inside the store.
As she unwrapped another block of butter bigger than her hand, Robin Shaffer declined to divulge how much butter she puts into the ginger spice cookies that have already become a sensation at the new Four Flours Baking Company.
“That’s a secret,” she said.
Schaffer then added a generous amount of Spectrum-brand shortening into her prized Hobart mixer just to be certain that the cookies turned out more decadent.
Schaffer is the “chief baking officer” of the new bakery at 1203 Chapel St. between Park and Howe. She opened the doors there last month with some help from a city facade grant and the state’s Small Business Express program. City officials joined her for a formal ribbon-cutting Thursday.
“We’re trying to straddle both sides of that issue of shortening versus butter in cookies,” Schaffer said as she used a spatula to scoop heaping mounds of shortening into the mixer.
The mixer, which she affectionately called her “buddy,” has been a part of the baking business for the 15 years she previously operated out of her home in Woodbridge.
Schaffer shows off a finished batch of ginger spice cookies.
The butter and shortening creamed together in the mixer with 16 large eggs, Schaffer added a large scoop of sugar and a large bottle of Wholesome Organic-brand molasses, propping up the bottle in such a way that the thick, sweet syrup poured slowly and steadily into the mixer. She then began loading her dry ingredients — unbleached whole wheat flour, granulated sugar, ginger, cinnamon and a little salt — onto a scale to make sure they were precise before adding them to the mixer.
Schaffer said the death of her father and a decision to move into his Woodbridge home, which has been in her in her family for 200 years, prompted the need to open a storefront: her commercial baking license was good only at her old house, not the new one.
The decision to move into the corner location on Chapel Street wasn’t a hard one. Her husband, Tony, the president of C.A. White real estate, collects the rent checks for the building.
The 4 “flours” in the company’s name represent each of Schaffer’s children.
The move also was a homecoming of sorts for Schaffer.
For the first five years of the 1990s, the Yale University grad owned a clothing and accessories store at 1215 Chapel St. Prior to that, she’d owned another shop on Upper State Street. In 1995, she was pregnant with her fourth child and the economy was in decline, so she closed the doors of the Chapel Street store to be a stay-at-home mom. She said she vowed that the next business she started would be something “I was going to make myself.”
Adriana Gheorghiciuc rolls out the dough
Making sweet treats was the ticket. Adriana Gheorghiciuc, who handles customer relations for the baking company and also helps mold the dough, said that Schaffer is in her element when she’s baking. “She’s really passionate about baking,” she said. “She puts her whole self into it.”
When you’re shoveling massive quantities of flour and sugar out of giant bins that nearly swallow your arm, and lifting huge mixing bowls filled with dough all day, you’ve got to put your whole self into the process.
“I just always liked to bake,” she said. “In high school I would come home and make cookies after school.”
For a while she baked for just close friends. She got the bug to make a full-time go at the baking life after an insurance agent and friend tapped her to bake a basket of cookies that could be delivered to local realtors.
“That was the beginning,” Schaffer said. “I started baking more, and I approached the local market to start selling the cookies to Brookside Market in Woodbridge and a couple of other stores.” Her commercial baking license allowed her to operate from her home for 15 years, which meant she could cater and provide her goods to local markets but couldn’t sell out of her home.
Morgan Metzler labels a batch of oatmeal chocolate coconut.
With her storefront on Chapel, that’s no longer a problem. You can come to the store and watch Schaffer, Gheorghiciuc, and a Johnson & Wales University-trained pastry baking aficionado, Morgan Metzler, roll out the dough for cookies, breads, biscotti and brownies, which are then displayed in the brightly arrayed shop.
You can even find that rare unicorn that many people experienced last summer during New Haven’s first food truck festival: the Chillwich, a staple on Four Flours’ food truck of the same name.
Schaffer said her husband, who also serves as the company CFO, usually mans the truck at food festivals, often with the help of one or more of their four children. After trying a Chillwich from the truck, people often ask where else they can get the treat, which features a generous helping of locally made ice cream, sandwiched between two of Schaffer’s decadent cookies. Now she has an answer: a freezer full of Chillwiches at the Chapel Street store.
“So here we are,” she said, “and hopefully, we’ll be here for a long time.”
With the wet and dry ingredients combined for the ginger spice cookies, Schaffer molded the cookie dough — the unbleached white flour, transformed in color by the spices and molasses — into individual balls that she weighed before transferring them onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet.
“We have wholesale partners in the area, Elm City Market, Nica’s. They get the packaged product, so we have to keep it at a certain weight,” she said, giving the dough a quick roll and then flattening each ball with the palm of her hand.
“The key is we dip it inside a confectionary sugar,” she said. “And the really fun part is that every cookie counts here, and so we try to decorate the top, and for this cookie we use fresh ginger pieces. We put a big slab on top.”
Ginger spice from the storefront display.
After 10 to 15 minutes in the oven, the buttery, sugar encrusted goodness that emerges from her convection oven helps you understand why the ginger spice cookie has been her new shop’s sleeper hit.
Schaffer said she’s always loved the Chapel West neighborhood, and she’s glad to be back. “I always felt comfortable when I had my store here for five years,” she said. “It’s a little bit more neighborhood‑y versus the craziness of downtown and the throngs. It’s nice and comfortable.”
Schaffer: Sugar free = not fun
She said the company is looking to expand its gluten-free and vegan options. The store also sells its dough pre-made, so you can whip up a warm batch of cookies at home.
Alas, Schaffer has drawn the line at selling sugar-free baked goods.
“There’s been a request for sugar-free items,” Schaffer said. “There’s no fun in sugar free. What I always say is that you can have a cookie — just go for a little walk afterwards.”