The baking point

It’s Christmastime at Scandia Bakery, and they can barely keep up with the demand for cutout cookies – with angels, stars and wreaths whizzing out the door as fast as they jump out of the oven.

“Trees, everyone wants the trees,” says owner Marcela Rodriguez, who orders an extra 60 pounds of butter a week to feed the holiday rush.

She’s loving the bakery’s new location, having moved last month only a few yards from Scandia’s original site at the Valley Mart Shopping Center. Having a window display case to show off wedding cakes and decorated goodies, and being a bit closer to Sonoma Market, has boosted business. “I’m seeing a lot of new faces,” she said, while her longtime loyals have settled in nicely as well.

It helps that Marcela kept her original Scandinavian furniture, with tabletops newly lacquered, and chair seats nicely re-covered. “Everyone was worried I’d get new tables and chairs,” Marcela says, explaining that regular customers are not always open to change. Scandia is the epitome of tradition and, besides the window display, the only real difference is that the new shop is seven-feet wider and has four extra tables, bringing the total to a cozy 10.

It’s the family and friendship feeling that makes the baked goods seem extra sweet, as roots run long here for Marcela and the world she’s cooked up.

A native of Bolivia, she moved to Sweden when she was 17, attending college and spending five years there before coming to San Francisco to visit Swedish friends, and deciding to make a move.

With no definitive plan, she left Sweden, staying with friends in San Francisco and, one fateful weekend, coming to Sonoma. “I was in love,” she said of her first reaction to the Valley of the Moon. “I got a newspaper and started calling around,” and soon she had an apartment in Sonoma and was working for a temp agency. “When you are in your early 20s you don’t really think,” she said, and although she was not unhappy she was a little lonely, until she found Scandia and its former owner, Swedish native Kai Friis, who opened the business in 1987.

“I was over missing Bolivia by then, I missed Sweden,” she says, and she enjoyed speaking Swedish with Kai.

She started stopping by regularly until eventually he hired her and during the course of several years taught her the bakery business. That was in 1993.

“He was always talking about selling the place and one day I said, ‘Why don’t you sell it to me.’” He agreed. “Of course I didn’t have the money but he was fair and gave me a good price.” In 2000, she took over, including receiving all of Kai’s recipes, some handwritten in Swedish. In five years she had paid him in full.

Her Scandia story continued to unfold when Chito Rodriguez began coming in frequently, and then more frequently, “Until I started getting suspicious about all the coffee he was drinking,” Marcela laughed, speaking fondly of the man she married in 2002. Chito joined Scandia, too, and now does all the baking. Their children, Lydia, 7, and Sammy, 2, are frequently there with them and they feel blessed that they rarely need a babysitter. “I like the cupcakes,” Lydia said, smiling brightly and waiting for Santa to bring her two front teeth.

Marcela also met her “adopted mother,” Saga Thovtrup at Scandia. Saga is from Sweden and her husband is Danish, so she, too, was drawn to the Scandinavian warmth, and has worked a few hours a week at the bakery for more than 14 years. “She doesn’t need to work but I won’t let her quit. She is a wonderful grandma to my kids,” Marcela said.

Marcela’s best friend, Jenny Sun, has worked at the bakery for 20 years, and they were roommates before she got married.

Jenny was born and raised in China, and Marcela thinks it’s wonderful how culturally diverse – Bolivia, Mexico, Sweden, China – Scandia’s realm has become, while in so many ways, including the recipes, everything stays the same.

“You just have to be passionate about desserts to work here,” she says.