Samuel Joffe of Water Mill and New York City came to professional baking later in life but took to it with gusto.
It was after retiring from a career in the trucking business in New Jersey and Baltimore that Mr. Joffe, then living in Montauk, became a baker and pastry chef. He worked for Mitchel London at the Montauk Yacht Club before enrolling at the age of 65 in the International Pastry Arts Center in Katonah, N.Y., run by Albert Kumin, who had been the White House pastry chef for the Carter administration.
After graduating he went to work as the baker at Pino Luongo’s Sapore di Mare in Wainscott, and went on to bake for the Red Horse Market in East Hampton and 75 Main in Southampton before eventually opening his own bakery, Georgica Bakers in Amagansett, where he became known for his sourdough bread, decadent brownies, and French pear tarts, his wife, Linda Kline, wrote.
Mr. Joffe died of pneumonia at home in Water Mill on Nov. 21. He was 97 and had been in declining health for the past five years.
He was born Sam Hirschfeld in Newark on Oct. 14, 1924, to Harry Joffe and the former Ann Schwat. His father, born with the last name Hirschfeld, had immigrated from Latvia at 17 and gone into business with an older man he had met on the ship crossing to New York, last name Joffe. He was like a father to him, and not long after his arrival in the United States, Harry Hirschfeld changed his last name to Joffe. His sons had his original surname.
They were raised in Newark, where Samuel attended Weequahic High School, playing trumpet in the school band. “At his prom, he taught a pimply young singer named Frank Sinatra the school song,” Ms. Kline wrote.
He was a freshman at Rutgers University in 1942 when World War II escalated and he was recruited by the Army. He served in England and was sent to France after D-Day. It was after the war that the Hirschfeld brothers both changed their last names to Joffe, and Samuel Joffe started his trucking business, Elizabeth Freight.
Mr. Joffe built a house in Montauk’s Hither Hills in 1972 and commuted there on weekends until his retirement in 1980, when he moved there full time. Retired and divorced for the second time, in the mid-1980s he began to bake. His job at Sapore di Mare led to a move to East Hampton, where he met Linda Kline, a writer. Ms. Kline’s column in The East Hampton Independent, “Cooking With Sam,” chronicled her husband’s culinary adventures.
The two were married at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons on Nov. 21, 1999.
Mr. Joffe was an affable person who built a large community of friends here. “He loved people and they loved him back,” Ms. Kline said. “While he wasn’t an artist himself, he loved the company of the East End community of artists and writers.”
When he closed Georgica Bakers in 1999, Mr. Joffe “returned to his lifelong love of music and became a docent at Carnegie Hall, where he led tours to visitors from all over the world,” his wife wrote. The two kept homes in New York City and on the South Fork, but Mr. Joffe preferred it here, especially in recent years. “He loved the beaches, the sunsets, the very air,” his wife said.
He was involved in the Jewish Center of the Hamptons for many years, and “until he developed macular degeneration he had a regular tennis game, and was known for his ability to return the ball steadily wherever it landed,” Ms. Kline said. “That defines Sam for me best. Sam was present in all his relationships, whether with friends, with bread, or with tennis.”
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Abby Maguire of Mendham, N.J., and Danielle Joffe of Sheffield, Mass., and by four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A brother, Bob Joffe, died before him.
Mr. Joffe was buried at Temple Adas Israel’s Chevra Kodetia cemetery in Sag Harbor on Nov. 24. His wife suggested memorial contributions to Temple Adas Israel, P.O. Box 1378, Sag Harbor 11963, the Jewish Center of the Hamptons at P.O. Box 5107, East Hampton 11937, or East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978.
