The story behind Söderberg, Edinburgh

I'll start with a disclaimer, I couldn't find a lot of information about the background story of this bakery. I tried connecting all the pieces together in the best way that I could, and I hope most of the details here are true.

Ones upon a time, in a small village far away from here on the south coast of Sweden.

The Award-winning Swedish baker Jan Hedhhas joined to Peter Ljungquift and together they opened the successful Olof Viktors Cafe.

Meanwhile, in England.

Two English friends, Ian and Wendy, had left their corporate jobs to pursue their own dream of introducing a Swedish-inspired bakery to the UK.

On a research trip to Sweden, they met Peter at his bakery, they were captivated by the trays of warm crusty loaves, bags of stoneground flour and jars of bubbling sourdough starter. While sharing an evening at Peter’s home, Wendy and Ian told Peter they thought his crispbread was simply too good to remain confined to one small bakery.

They had the passion to make this delicious crispbread into a brand that could be sold across the UK and further afield. And so, Peter’s Yard crispbread was born.

Back in Sweden, after many years of wood-oven baked sourdough loaves and coffee, Jan and Peter decided to expand their bakery to Europe.

They teamed up with Ian and Wendy, and together they opened Söderberg!

At the moment they have one bakery in London, and 7 branches in Edinburgh.

In my opinion, Söderberg are the safest option when you get the task of choosing a place to brunch in from a hungry group of friends. they are all over the city and have a consistent verity of good food.

Their flagship store is located in Pavilion, and besides there usual treats (which ill get into in a moment) they offer stonebaked sourdough pizza.

In my opinion, their dough was a bit too sour, especially with the tomato sauce.

I'd pick one of there bianca pizza's next time, I think it would balance the sourness nicely.

If you're not that much into pizza ( the door is over there byeeee) they also offer salads, sandwiches and a few other baked goods.

Here you could also enjoy a verity of events, such as live jass every Sunday evening.

We cant talk about Söderberg without mentioning there Kanelbullar (cinnamon buns).

if you can only taste one thing from this wonderful place, ill definitely recommend you to pick one of those.

especially if you can get one in the morning when they are still fresh and warm!

The soft pillowy dough covers you like a warm blanket and hugs you with the sweet aroma of cinnamon.

Can you really ask more than that from a pastry?

To makes things even better, they come in a variety of seasonal changing flavours!

my personal favourite is the Blåbärsbull (a blueberry and vanilla bun).

Coffee wise, they have a blend from Johan & Nyström, a Sweden speciality coffee & tea company (they are super cool and only do fair direct trade).

The only bad thing I can say about it is that it's boring.

I guess they targeted their coffee to a broader audience, that doesn't look for interesting undernotes and such.

Its have a very pleasant low acidity and its quite sweet, so not your typical burnt espresso blend, but also nothing to get excited over.

Sustainability wise, at the end of a day all of the unsold loaves of bread and baked goods are going to the Food Sharing Scotland Hub, instead of thrown away.

They also heavily promote keep-cups, if you would purchase one at there store you would get a £1 coffee and a free bun, as well as 50p discount on your daily coffee.

If you choose to take away your coffee without a reusable cup, you would get a Vegware takeaway cup, which are not only recyclable but compostable.

There are a few things that I don't like about Söderberg.

the first one would be how sweet most of there desserts are, for example there Mazarin or the palsternackskaka cake are so sweet you can barely taste anything but sugar (in my snobbish opinion).

another problem I found (at least in the bigger shops) is that it feels like a chain (and they are haha).

It's missing that one to one connection you get in most local cafes (that they aren't so it's quite a stupid thing to comment on).