The bakery on vår gård

Ten years ago, when Patimakorn Padtum Söderström moved from Thailand to Sweden, she had never eaten bread. Today, she is Vår Gård 's pastry chef and Swedish master baker. Patimakorn, known as Ått av alla, tells me to help myself from the hearty fika buffet.

It's half an hour until the conference guests arrive to ease their afternoon dip with sweetness. The table is radiating with untouched delicacies: petit choux with vanilla cream and raspberry jam, banana cake with chocolate mousseline, roll cake with buttercream... For those who want to be a little more wholesome, there are sugar-free chocolate balls made with cocoa, coconut, pumpkin seeds, dates and vanilla.

It feels sinful to be the first out – but I heed the author's call – and help myself. The cream absolutely gushes out when I sink my teeth into her petit choux. Sweden's foremost baker looks on with the humble horror of a perfectionist. “Did it taste good?” she asks. It tastes more than good. It’s high-class fika, which I’m also talking about.

At 27, winning the title of Baker of the Year is remarkable in itself. But Ått’s journey is even more astonishing: Ten years ago, when she moved to Sweden from Bangkok, she had never eaten bread.

Today, there is certainly a decent selection of Thai restaurants in Borlänge. Ten years ago, the situation was different. If the young Ått wanted to eat Thai food, she had to cook it herself. She started whipping up fried rice and other dishes she missed from her homeland, and discovered to her surprise that she liked cooking. She applied to the hotel and restaurant program, but her grades weren’t good enough.

A teacher advised her to apply to the food industry program instead: “It’s kind of like a restaurant, but you bake cakes and bread.” Ått was excited the first week when she and her classmates were assigned to bake a cream cake. And her enthusiasm grew stronger when she noticed her classmates' reluctance:

- Half of the students didn't even want to be there. They only took the course because they hadn't gotten in anywhere else and mostly spent themselves throwing dough at each other, she says.

Patimakorn "Eight" Padtum Söderström
Age: 27 years old.
Occupation: Baker and pastry chef.
Lives: Apartment in Tumba.
Family: Husband Adam Söderström and two-year-old son Anthony.

“I’m going to make the best cake,” thought Ått, and she was so proud of succeeding with her resolution that she posted the results on Facebook. The drive, the desire to become the best as quickly as possible, had a lot to do with her underdog role. While her spoiled classmates had grown up with cinnamon buns and marzipan, she herself barely knew what wheat flour looked like. She was completely clueless, and it wasn’t just out of spite.

– Cinnamon bun, what is it? Cinnamon, that’s something we have in our food in Thailand. We don’t have a bread culture, but I liked that challenge. I’m stubborn and easy to learn and worked very hard to learn quickly. The I-will-show-you feeling took her a long way. She made the most progress during her internships.

During her third year of high school, she went from considering baking as an exciting job to seeing it as an art form. At previous internships, she had seen semi-finished products being assembled into something “home-baked”; seen margarine replace real butter… At Tösse Bageri in Stockholm, she finally realized what professional pride is. Ått brought a small notebook with her that she scribbled full of observations, recipes and insights.


It was also there that she broadened her interest in pastries to bread. Amidst news such as sourdough and stone ovens, Ått developed hyper-fast. But language was still a problem. When she was asked to fetch a pallet, she didn’t know what it was. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t one,” she lied shamefully. “But it’s there!” her bewildered colleague roared. The Swedish language was difficult in itself; trying to
decipher the lingo of bakers and confectioners on the side felt like a massive overtime task. But Ått learned, word for word, and soon threw herself into free-wheeling expressions like “plåtolle” (technical language for the transparent plastic bag that is put on the baking sheet before it is put in the freezer).

At the final exam for the food line, she offered the jury Tösse-inspired buns, wreaths, pastries and bread. The students were allowed to choose a pastry themselves, to show what they had learned, and the vast majority chose to shine with a wedding cake. Ått instead made a sophisticated bouquet of brittle chocolate roses. Once again, the cat among the ermines was named best in class.

"Thailand doesn't really have a bread culture. I liked the challenge."


Sunk on the sofa, with her eyes fixed on the autumn leaves swirling outside the window, Ått thinks back to her first ten years in Sweden. On the dazzling white chef's coat is her full name: Patimakorn Padtum Söderström. That's her name, not Ått. The fact that everyone still calls her that, that it even says Ått on her Baker of the Year diploma, is a long story. When Patimakorn explains that “Ått” is a Swedish form of “Oat”, oats, she often gets the reaction: “Aha! Baker – oats – I get it.” But the fact is that the nickname has stuck with her since childhood. In Thailand, where easygoing nicknames are common, her mother called her “Oat” for the simple reason that she liked oat milk.

The surname is more easily explained. Söderström comes from her husband Adam – he has also won Baker of the Year – whom she met during an internship at Magnus Johansson in Hammarby Sjöstad. They rolled croissants together, baked envelope bread for the Nobel dinner. And fell in love. The fact that Ått also fell in love with Vår Gård is mainly due to two things. One: The beautiful surroundings. Two: She gets to be both a baker and a pastry chef, a luxury that few are blessed with. In the morning she bakes rolls for the breakfast buffet, then buns for morning coffee, then she makes two types of bread for lunch and dinner in the evening.

After that she takes on the role of pastry chef and prepares the delicacies that crowd the coffee table in front of the bar. The conference guests' afternoon chatter becomes considerably more cheerful when they see her creations. Eight people stand backstage and smile when she hears it.
- The advantage of having guests who have already paid is that I can decide what they get to try, she says.
- It gives me free rein to experiment!
She has always enjoyed weaving the flavors of her homeland Thailand into the original Swedish.

She uses ingredients such as mango, cashew nuts and coconut extensively. She is keen that there is always something for everyone, and is therefore baking increasingly healthy coffee, very raw food-inspired. The chocolate-flavored raw balls, for example, can be eaten by everyone, even vegans, lactose intolerant and gluten-allergic people. Despite her cometary career, Ått gives a cautious impression. She is still cautious when it comes to introducing her own innovations.

Her specialty, a long-leavened sourdough bread made from spelt with toasted sesame seeds, is a good example. Only after she won the Swedish Championship with the bread on the menu did she dare to serve it to Vår Gård 's guests. Swedish champion, yes. The development curve has been steep. Ått laughs when she thinks back to that cream cake she baked during the first week of high school. A few days ago she saw the picture again on Facebook.

– Ugh! It looks like something an amateur made. The fruit is arranged strangely and the cream is too thick and has cracked. There is too much of everything. After ten years in Sweden, I have learned what lagom means.

Lagom is best? Not automatically, but definitely when the Baker of the Year ties his apron on.


Text: Christian Daun