A Snack Attack Journey and Interview with Sina Clark

I came up to Saugerties, NY in the heart of the Catskills mountains, to escape NYC lockdown life, to breathe mask free in a backyard, bathe in mountain streams and to get a respite from the unbearable events that culminated in my sister’s death, which I wrote about here. I hadn’t bargained on the pastries…

Oh! the rustic plum tarts ($8/$10), the pear dumplings ($6), the savory galettes with mushrooms, blue cheese and carmelized onions on a puff pastry crust ($4/square). Baker extraordinaire Sina Clark sells her wares from both the Saugerties Farmer’s Market stall on Saturdays and in her Partition St. shop Violet’s Bakery, named for her daughter.

I first noticed Violet’s Bakery goodies at the Saugerties Farmer’s Market last year. Sometimes pastries look, well, dead—perfect in appearance but dry or flavorless or mingy with the fruit. These are the folk art equivalent of pastry: rougher, more vibrant, with fruit sometimes glurting over the bounds of crust and crust sometimes overtaking fruit, each one an individual, made with heart and consummate skill. The pear dumpling is a bomb of texture and flavor, silken almost custard-like pear slathered in butter and sugar and spices, that could be cardamom one day and nutmeg the next, swaddled like a beloved baby in puff pastry sheeting and cooked in the oven at a high temp. The apple and pear dumplings happened because Sina Clark thought, “How lovely would it be to have a whole apple or a whole pear wrapped in pastry?” Lovely indeed!

In our month here in Saugerties, I have bought Violet’s Bakery treats for several distanced social events, and each time conversation, however riveting, stops the moment bites are taken. There is this pause to notice: these…are…different. And inevitably, I am asked the provenance, and I’m happy to recommend this little bakery that could—and did. In fact I wanted to know more about how Violet’s Bakery came to be, so I interviewed Sina Clark, shown below with bakery namesake.

Every time I come in the small, sweet storefront (masked and one person at at time) Sina Clark is in motion, swaddling fruit in dough or icing her gorgeous mini cakes ($10). “Sometimes you don’t need a whole cake!” Clark says, and voices a sentiment with which I heartily concur: “Whole cakes never die!” In any case, until we spoke by phone later, I hadn’t realized what a powerhouse Sina Clark is, and talking to her also reminds me of the circuitous path life can take until you find your true calling.

Sina grew up baking and cooking for her family as a latch key kid in New Jersey. She graduated in English and Art History at Rutgers, and went into a career in advertising. After the dot com bubble burst in the late 1990s, Clark was laid off, out of work for the first time in her life. She didn’t know then how fortuitous that would be. A friend wanted to buy one of her legendary cheesecakes. “So it gave me the idea,” Clark says, “I started baking cheesecakes in my apartment in Brooklyn. I started walking them around, literally walking slices of cheesecake around to every deli and restaurant in the city.” Soon enough she got three restaurant clients, and after that, Sina admits, “I then realized very quickly. I better go to culinary school, because I don’t really know what I’m doing.” At the age of 30, Sina enrolled in the Institute of Culinary Education, better known as Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. “I got a degree in baking and pastry art—all honors! I just like to toot my own horn,” and toot she should, and fill that horn with frangipane while she’s at it! Not only did Clark get a degree in baking but she also got a degree in culinary management. After an externship at Le Cirque 2000, she got a job at New York City’s famed Magnolia Bakery, with duties split between icing cakes and management. When Magnolia was sold in 2007, Clark stayed on with the new owner. She helped the bakery expand, opening up more Magnolia outposts in New York City, and in Los Angeles, Chicago and even Dubai and opening a Harlem production facility.

Then, the game changer came. Pregnant with her daughter, Violet, Clark moved upstate to Saugerties, NY, this sleepy village nestled in the Catskills, which she says was so friendly and welcoming. ” As soon as I moved here I met wonderful neighbors, in the grocery store and library. I feel very lucky.” Once in Saugerties, Clark managed retail operations for the area’s famed 27-year-old bakery Bread Alone. She followed that with a stint in retail operations back in the city at Pain D’Avignon, which, she says, “makes the most wonderful bread in the world.” As a single mom, though, commuting three days a week back and forth between Saugerties and the city was not wonderful but draining.

When the Pain D’Avignon job ended after three years, Clark says she was “struggling and broke,” but it seemed, a propitious time, nevertheless, to do what she had gone to culinary school for: start her own business. Returning to her baking roots, Clark began producing cakes and tarts out of her home and selling them at the Saugerties Farmer’s Market. While now a shadow of its former self in COVID-19 times, the market is normally a bustling array of local vendors with earnest folk singers plucking banjos, a kids’ art corner, cafe tables and fun non-food vendors. The market was key to the opening of Violet’s Bakery. Clark gained a loyal following and even picked up wholesale customers such as the village’s bookstore/café Inquiring Minds and Circle W in Palenville.

 In 2020 Clark opened up her own boutique bakery on Partition Street. “I’m not going to lie,” she says, “It was very hard and very scary and it cost literally more money than I thought it was going to cost to open, even though it was such a small space…I was panicky.” On Sunday March 15, Violet’s Bakery opened with a line going around the corner, and Sina Clark sold out and says, “I was excited!” She closed shop and thought, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I’m going to be prepping, and then I’ll open up again on Thursday.” Then, BOOM. Coronavirus, went from a worrying thought to serious threat. Governor Cuomo announced a shutdown of all non-essential businesses by midweek. Thoughts of prepping baked goods for sellout crowds went to “I’m more concerned with staying alive and keeping my daughter well,” says Clark.

Still, what do people turn to in the midst of a pandemic? They turn to the comfort of baked goods. While many enterprising folks made their own sourdough starter and had a veritable banana bread production line going, everyone craves sweets and savories made by the masters. Violet’s Bakery was shuttered for three weeks until Sina said to herself: “I’m scared,I’m afraid, but I have to open again.” She began with curbside pick up half-days Saturday and Sundays, then, as demand swelled, added a Friday after a couple of weeks, then added Thursday. Right now, she has a staff member manning a booth at Saugerties Farmers Market AND keeps the bakery open Thursday through Sunday (note: she sells cute aprons and mask sewn by her mother, too!). When I come in at noon, much of her goods are sold out! Clark says she is figuring out things as she goes along. “I’m trying to be nimble in case there’s another shutdown, so I won’t have a lot of waste.” So far, the only thing that has shut Clark down again is a not so friendly West Saugerties resident, the black bear that tried to break into her car on Thursday July 16, which necessitated her closing shop for the day to deal with the damage. Of course everyone asks if her baked goodies were inside. No they weren’t, but after sampling Sina’s wares can you blame a bear for trying?

Violet’s Bakery
Opens at 10:30 AM Friday - Sunday, Closes 5:00PM Thur/Friday, 7:00 PM Saturday and 4:00PM sunday
81 Partition Street
Saugerties, NY 12477
845-247-3788

And now for NYCSnackAttack’s “Deep Breath Moment”