Rockland County's Flours Pasta and Bakeshop Serves Fresh Pasta, Acclaimed Cookies

The score that settled the debate: 53.73% to 46.27%. In a lohud reader poll that closed in March 2026, Flours Pasta & Bakeshop at 11 New Main Street in Haverstraw edged out Aunt Mia's Gourmet Cookie Shoppe in Tappan to claim Rockland County's best chocolate chip cookie. That a pasta shop beat a dedicated cookie destination is the kind of outcome that tells you something significant about what Sofia Todisco and Abigail Friedman have built since opening their storefront in 2023 on a stretch of downtown Haverstraw that once housed The Rockland County Times.

The shop is open Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. only. Five hours, two days a week. The line that forms on Saturday afternoon is a reliable indicator of how the county has adopted Flours into its weekend routine.

The Cookie That Won Rockland

The winning item is called the rye chocolate chunk cookie, and it has been on the Flours menu since before the storefront existed. "The rye chocolate chunk cookies were a staple since the beginning," Todisco said. The formula is specific: 50% rye flour, 50% all-purpose flour, European butter, Happy eggs from Upstate New York, and a ratio by mass that runs 50% cookie dough to 50% chocolate. A finish of flaky salt cuts the richness at exactly the right moment.

The rye is the variable that distinguishes it from every other chocolate chip cookie in the county, and Todisco knows it. "People will try the cookies and notice something different about them," she says, "which I hope leads them to try a rye rigatoni." The cookie isn't a stand-alone product. It's a gateway.

Behind the Name: 14 Flours and Counting

The name Flours, plural, is a declaration of range. Todisco works with 14 different milled grains across her full menu. Semolina and 00 flour go into the rigatoni and ravioli. Einkorn, an ancient grain with higher protein and fiber content than modern wheat, appears in other pasta formats and in the snickerdoodles. Rye carries the chocolate chunk cookie and also runs through a rye rigatoni that rewards any pasta customer curious enough to ask.

The distinctions matter in texture, chew, and nutritional profile, and they reflect an approach to sourcing that treats the raw ingredient as the actual product rather than a neutral substrate. Every item on the shelf at Flours was made at Flours.

From Bologna to New Main Street

Todisco's path to pasta ownership started in Bologna in 2019, where she spent three months studying the craft. Back in New York, she launched a catering company called Sofia's Feast in January 2020, then watched the event industry shut down within weeks. The pivot that followed shaped everything. "I started grocery shopping for people and doing weekly meal deliveries," she says, "and my fresh pasta kits were always the most popular." When farmers markets reopened, she took her pasta and baked goods to the stalls. The response confirmed what the delivery receipts already suggested.

She eventually acquired a pasta-making machine to increase output. The ravioli and gnocchi are still made by hand. By 2023, she and Friedman had secured the space on New Main Street and brought the farmers market operation indoors. The pasta-making station sits in the front window, visible from the sidewalk, and it pulls in exactly the kind of foot traffic you'd want: people who came for a brownie and left with fresh rigatoni.

What to Buy on Saturday Afternoon

The retail selection at Flours rotates, but the categories are consistent:

• Fresh pasta (rigatoni, ravioli, gnocchi, bucatini) in both conventional and specialty grain formats
• House-made sauces, including unexpected pairings like corn and poblano developed during the farmers market years
• Ready-made meals and frozen pasta for weeknight convenience at home
• Baked goods: babka, biscotti, snickerdoodles, and the rye chocolate chunk cookie

The frozen pasta is worth noting specifically. Everything sold in the freezer case was made in-house, which means you can stock three or four portions and have a genuine Flours dinner on a Tuesday without fighting for a Saturday afternoon slot. For first visits, ask what the fresh ravioli filling is that day, and order the cookie while they last.

The Cafe and the Coffee

The shop runs a small cafe alongside its retail operation. Coffee comes from Coffee Labs Roasters in Tarrytown; teas are sourced from Food is Med Farms in Westwood, New Jersey. The food menu covers frittatas, French toast bakes, pasta salads, soups, and hot pasta dishes when the temperature justifies them. The seasonal calibration is genuine: the menu shifts based on what makes sense to eat, not what's easiest to laminate.

Stopping in for a latte and leaving with a bag of fresh rigatoni is the intended use case, and the two activities reinforce each other in ways that explain why the shop has built a loyal morning and midday customer base in addition to the Saturday cookie crowd.

Classes, Pop-Ups, and What Comes Next

Flours runs cooking classes and pop-up dinners for adults and kids, with formats practical enough to immediately apply at home. "Bring home your own lasagna" and "how to make the best salad dressing" are recurring themes, which is exactly the right approach for a shop that wants customers cooking more rather than just consuming more.

The ambition behind it is clear from how Todisco has described it: "I want to introduce the community to small-batch pasta that's both sustainable and seasonal. Everything that we sell here is made here, and I'm really proud of that." The shop also carries goods from other local small businesses in a provisions-style section, extending the farmers market logic into a permanent retail context.

A county cookie title, a Friday-Saturday window that consistently sells out key items, a coffee program anchored to a Tarrytown roaster, pasta visible in the front window from the street: Flours Pasta & Bakeshop has built the kind of neighborhood anchor at 11 New Main Street that downtown Haverstraw tends to hold onto.