Photo by Jay Paul
Claudia Strobing wants to bring black-and-white cookies, babka and the local bake shop experience she grew up with on Long Island to Richmond. Though COVID-19 paused plans for her first brick-and-mortar bakery, Claudia’s Bake Shop, the 58-year-old former catering company owner is currently whipping up online orders of old-world treats at Hatch Kitchen until she opens her bakery.
Richmond magazine: When did you start baking?
Claudia Strobing: I was a kid who always baked. As we got older, my mother went back to work full time and left us kids to make dinner. So my sisters made a deal with me: If I made dessert, they would make the main course. We always had homemade dessert after dinner.
RM: What does baking mean to your family?
Strobing: As I became a parent, I included the kids in the baking process. They were always standing on a stool helping me. Parents would come into my house and say, “Why does it always smell like sugar?”
RM: What do you want your namesake space to add to Richmond?
Strobing: I want customers to see they can come to a place where all we do is bake. They come in and get to be wise about, “What am I going to choose? Is it going to be a butter cookie? Is it going to be a black and white?"
RM: How do you hope the bakery impacts the local Jewish community?
Strobing: You have a lot of us who have moved from larger cities where access to Jewish foods is much easier. I’ll be able to make babka and make challah for Shabbat, so they can get the things they’re used to getting their hands on.
RM: When will you look to open a physical location?
Strobing: We’re going to do online orders until we get to 2021. I think by then perhaps the pandemic will have run its course. But the economy is really the problem. Bakers are a big part of communities, but you don't have to eat dessert.
RM: Would you ever consider opening multiple locations?
Strobing: I’d love to have Claudia’s Bake Shops in every city in America. The truth is, we are losing a lot of bakeries. Supermarkets — and I used to work for one — have upped their game. I want to bring back the bakery experience I grew up with. It’s really a neighborhood [once you] have a bakery there.
