• Home
  • Posts
  • New Bakery in Greenwich Eschews Gluten, but Not Flavor

New Bakery in Greenwich Eschews Gluten, but Not Flavor

bakery1-1-30
By the Way Bakery is a new bakery that has opened in Greenwich. (Michelle Moskowitz photo)
By the Way Bakery is a new bakery that has opened in Greenwich. (Michelle Moskowitz photo)

 

Michelle Moskowitz
Sentinel Correspondent

By the Way Bakery, located at 19 East Putnam Ave., is reminiscent of an old-fashioned bakery featuring hand-made baked goods made in small batches, perfect for an afternoon delight or a sweet celebration.

What makes the bakery unique is that everything they bake, which includes cookies, muffins, scones, mini-cakes, tea cakes and custom cakes, is completely gluten-free, dairy-free and certified kosher.

When walking inside the charming, clean-lined shop, one is quickly intoxicated by the aroma of homemade goodness and warmth.

Designed with a color scheme that mimics butter-cream frosting and chocolate fondant, a mason-jar light fixture evokes an intimate and homey feel.

Each item sports a delicately hand-written label, such as “mini chocolate-chip cake,” “schnibbles cake,” “blueberry corn muffin,” “mixed fruit scone,” or “marble tea cake.”

Helene Godin, founder and CEO of By the Way Bakery, was new to the bakery business when she first started the venture back in 2011.

After a lucrative, 22-year career as an attorney specializing in intellectual property for companies such as NBC, Reader’s Digest and Bloomberg, Godin was ready to make a life change.

By the Way Bakery is a new bakery that has opened in Greenwich. (Michelle Moskowitz photo)
By the Way Bakery is a new bakery that has opened in Greenwich. (Michelle Moskowitz photo)

“The breadth of what I got to experience in law was amazing, but I just knew I was ready to do something different, something local, something that didn’t require me to be sitting at a desk,” says Godin.

During this exploratory phase of the next chapter of her life, Godin, who lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., began to recognize the ever-growing section of gluten-free items at her local supermarket.

Godin quickly realized that this was an underserved niche market, and, as she put it. “A lightbulb went off.”

She decided she would look into creating her very own delicious baked goods—goods that were not only gluten-free, but dairy-free as well, since many people had sensitivities to both.

She felt passionate about bringing something special to her Hastings-on-Hudson community, and hoped that one day her local shop would garner attention from neighboring communities as well.  It did.

Using her vast corporate background, she immersed herself in all things bakery; she taught herself how to bake, how to work with food purveyors, how to plunge into the many facets involved in building a specialized bakery brand that was sure to delight.

By the Way Bakery opened its first doors in Hastings-on-Hudson in May of 2011 after just one year of planning.

After experiencing great success with the first shop, Godin said she would either “go home or go big” and went on to open two more bakeries, both in Manhattan.

By the Way Bakery is a new bakery that has opened in Greenwich. (Michelle Moskowitz photo)
By the Way Bakery is a new bakery that has opened in Greenwich. (Michelle Moskowitz photo)

In December of 2016, Godin decided that Greenwich would be a perfect spot for her growing brand.

“I knew Greenwich would make a great market because people here are health-conscious,” said Godin.

Today, she has 20 bakers in total, a sales staff, and a head of production.

Godin also has a dedicated baking facility in Pleasantville, N.Y., where everything is made fresh daily and distributed to By the Way’s four locations.

The Greenwich shop is already garnering a steady flow of traffic as goods are selling well and custom cake orders are on the rise—especially their layer cakes, which Godin says are perfect for entertaining.

“What I have noticed is that my Greenwich customers are always buying to share with others,” says Godin.

A glossy book of custom cakes, such as birthday cakes and wedding cakes, is available for perusing in-store, but cakes can be designed in any fashion with an assortment of flavors.

Some of By the Way’s most popular cake combinations are the “M” vanilla cake with chocolate filling and frosting; the spiced carrot cake, which is carrot cake with non-dairy “cream cheese” filling and frosting; and the lemon cake with raspberry jam filling and raspberry frosting.

Just last week, Godin’s team created an Albert Einstein cake for a budding young scientist. The cake had six scientific equations inscribed into it.

Upcoming for Valentine’s Day, the bakery is featuring a “Throwing a Kiss” emoji cake made of black and white layer cake, rose-shaped red velvet mini-cakes, and linzer hearts—heart-shaped cookies filled with raspberry jam and topped with powdered sugar.

By the Way Bakery serves the popular Stumptown coffee from Brooklyn, and teas as well to accompany its treats.

Some of the most popular treats include the ginger crinkles, lemon poppy cake, coconut cloud cake, sour cherry cake, and one of Godin’s personal favorites, almond cookies, which she describes as having “a crispy, crunchy exterior, a moist center, and the perfect amount of sweet.”

The company uses only high-quality products, such as French cocoa powder, Italian cherries, Belgian chocolate, and fresh juices, which is what Godin attributes to the great flavor represented in her baked goods, making the absence of gluten and dairy go unnoticed, much to her customer’s delight.

“My goal has always been for our baked goods to taste as good as any conventional baked good out there,” said Godin.

This reporter’s twin eight-year old daughters each sampled the brownie cookie with chocolate chips and immediately asked for another, after flashing ear-to-ear grins (with no mention of the gluten-free, dairy-free label).

Store hours are Mon. through Sat., 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sun. 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

To contact By the Way Bakery, please call (203) 489-3610 or visit btwbakery.com.

Related Posts
Loading...