Sneak Peek: The Good Batch

Anna Gordon has been baking since she was little, but it was one particular batch of oatmeal cookies that really got her thinking about turning it into a career. Four and a half years later, Anna is readying to open her first storefront, at 936 Fulton Street, for her widely beloved bakery The Good Batch. Before the doors are unlocked tomorrow (Tuesday, September 9) at 8am, we spoke to Anna and her husband/business partner Steve Hartong about their journey to a Clinton Hill bakery and what they hope to bring to the neighborhood.

The story starts, as previously mentioned, with cookies. Anna made those oatmeal raisins for Steve one day a few years back, but realized the recipe wasn’t quite right–it needed a little something different. It was then that Anna, a project manager by trade, considered she might be in the wrong industry.

So Anna, who has been living with Steve in Fort Greene (a neighborhood they love for its cultural richness and diversity, lush green spaces, central location, and of course, great food) for the past five years, got to cooking–er, baking.

She enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan, and got her sea legs at Marlow & Sons and Diner, where she says she first learned to make the best use of seasonal ingredients. Eventually, Anna distinguished The Good Batch (until now a wholesale operation based out of Sunset Park and a popular vendor at Smorgasburg and the Brooklyn Flea) from other Brooklyn bakeries in no small part with her authentic take on the stroopwafel.

That, too, was a product of Anna and Steve’s partnership. Steve’s Dutch family was frustrated with the lack of decent stroopwafels (the prefix is pronounced “strobe,” for fellow  -wafel amateurs out there) available to them in the US. Anna used her baking prowess to remedy the situation, making a caramel-drizzled name for The Good Batch in the process. And speaking of names…

“I thought of ‘The Good Batch’ one day when I was walking in the woods,” Anna says. “A small batch of cookies was the original idea.” She agrees the roots of the name come from a connotation of wholesomeness–using fresh, seasonal ingredients for example, or the sentiment behind making or sharing food with family, which she has turned into a mini empire–but with her new bakery, she’s certainly expanding from simply “a small batch of cookies.”

Since signing a lease on the former carpeted office space in April, Anna and Steve have removed a partition running down the middle of the storefront, added beautiful touches like pendant lamps, marble tabletops on ornate bases, and installed a counter with an aqua-tiled facade–plus built a gorgeous, airy kitchen with four ovens, several tables (some mistakenly delivered, at first, to the forthcoming Sister’s restaurant down the street) and enormous mixers (see above) that took three burly workers 45 minutes to haul in.

“We’ve been operating in the kitchen for about two weeks now,” Anna says, “and we’ve already gotten a lot more efficient. It’s been really nice just having it as ours.”

The couple also moved right around the corner from the bakery in June–which will help with Anna’s 6am start time–and have fostered relationships (or at least made swell memories) with neighbors The Fulton Grand, Emily, Conchita–and Brooklyn Victory Garden, who already carry The Good Batch goods.

Anna says customers can still expect limited runs of cookies and other treats–including flavors that haven’t been quite practical enough for The Good Batch’s wholesale clients–as well as their famous ice cream sandwiches using Blue Marble ice cream (likely six or seven flavors per day that aren’t always available at markets), hot chocolate with homemade whipped cream and stroopwafels in the colder months (“They’re more of a holiday treat to have with tea, and we’re going to serve them up all gooey and warm”), muffins and scones, cinnamon buns on weekends, cakes and cupcakes, organic teas from Milwaukee’s Rishi (plus Arnold Palmers and raspberry limeade), and drip coffee, pour over decaf, and cold brew from Counter Culture. Espresso, Anna and Steve say, will likely come later on.

The morning pastries and cakes are a new frontier for The Good Batch, and Anna says she’s looking forward to filling an underserved neighborhood niche–where to get a birthday cake. Eventually she plans to make ice cream cakes as well, to serve ice cream sundaes with homemade toppings, and even to have an online form available for cake ordering.

To achieve the ambitions Anna has for The Good Batch, she’s brought eight bakers over from her Sunset Park facility and hired four staff members to man the counter. And, of course, there’s Steve.

Anna explains that her project management experience and his expertise in administrative, financial, and legal matters have been responsible for getting their Fulton Street spot up and running. For the couple who met in 2007 serving similar roles at Roadrunner Records as they do now with their partnership at The Good Batch, continued success is just another collaborative effort.

“This company,” she says, “has been the brainchild of both of us.”

Steve adds he’s not too stressed about tomorrow’s opening–he just knows it’s imperative that he and Anna not get ahead of themselves.

“There’s so much we want to do here down the line,” he says, “but I know we can’t go into this thinking, ‘We need to be doing X, Y, and Z in this many months.’ We just need to figure out the first day, the first week, and go from there.”

The Good Batch (936 Fulton Street between St James Place and Cambridge Place) will be open from 8am-7pm Tuesday through Friday, 9am-8pm on Saturdays, 9am-7pm on Sundays, and closed on Mondays. Stop in starting tomorrow to grab something delicious, and welcome Anna, Steve, and co to Fulton Street!