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The go-to place for baked goods
Sangold's Gourmet Bakery, named after Megan Cramer's first fox-hunting horse, opened June 27 next to the Wal-Mart on Edwards Ferry Road in the space left vacant by the closing of the European Gourmet Bakery.
Cramer, 27, said she wants her bakery and sandwich shop to be the community's go-to place for cakes and baked goods. One look at happy diners with an oversized sandwich on home-baked Swiss country bread, or back for another go at the chocolate mousse cake, suggests she's off to a good start.
Look at Knakal's in Culpeper, where she formerly lived, Cramer said: No posted hours, no Web site, no answering machine. "But everyone for miles around knows if you need a wedding cake, you go to Knakal's. There's a line out the door by 7 a.m. for their doughnuts.
"That's what I want -- to have an establishment that becomes a local bakery in the community,” she said. “You know it's the place to go if you need a dozen cookies or dinner rolls or a wedding cake."
On the staff with Cramer are her mother, Natalie, the baker, icer and counter person; her father, Peyton, a familiar sight already at the Cascades Farmers market every Sunday morning; and her brother Judson, who handles the Middleburg Farmers Market Saturday mornings.
Get there early if you want the cinnamon rolls, Cramer said. They sell out fast.
The shop is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, but Cramer has yet to turn anyone away just because she already locked the door for the evening.
The sandwich bar offers a variety of meats and cheeses on fresh bread and rolls. Pies are coming soon, even though Cramer is a self-described cake aficionado, and she plans to add five or six tables, some booths and to tear out the gelato case to make room for more cakes and pies.
And she's giving her Swiss pastry chef – who makes truly awesome breads, she said – free rein to put Swiss chocolates on the plate.
The rest of the menu offers desserts, pastries, coffee, breads, cookies, cupcakes and fresh-squeezed lemonade.
By this winter, Cramer said, she plans to have a wine license in hand and will have added soups and salads to the menu.
Cramer graduated from Liberty High school in Fauquier and from Hollins College with a degree in American history. She said owning her own bakery fulfills a dream, and has been a great learning experience.
"It's great to know at the end of the day, when you turn the light off and lock the door, that if it was great, it's because you did it," she said.
And she gets to share kitchen space with her mother -- a situation that never happened at home because the kitchen was off-limits to children while her mom cooked.
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