It’s been a long journey – literally – for pastry chef Juliana Penteado, culminating in her small-but-beautiful bakery in Lisbon’s São Bento neighborhood, and another shop soon to come. The Brazilian chef first enrolled in a cooking school in São Paulo at age 12 where, she would spend six years studying. As a young girl, she went back and forth between cooking and baking, but the latter would eventually win. “I also like cooking but baking has a more delicate and feminine side which make my eyes sparkle,” she tells us. It’s that inspiration which shines through in the elegant, lovingly made pastries that have become her calling card.
In college in São Paulo, Juliana studied nutrition and then gastronomy, going on to work in in the events department of a large hospitality company before eventually moving to London where she completed the Le Cordon Bleu culinary and pastry course. After graduation she returned to Brazil, but not for long – a trip to Europe prompted a move to Paris to work in a restaurant, this time exclusively as a pastry chef.
Juliana relocated again to Lisbon five years ago to work in the restaurant 100 Maneiras as a pastry chef. After a year, her curiosity started wandering again, prompting Juliana to embark on a road trip around Portugal. She called this project the Rota Amarela, the “Yellow Road,” a journey with the goal of learning more about the country’s traditional and convent desserts, known for their copious use of egg yolks (hence the trip’s name). “I wanted to get to know the Portuguese sweets and pastries in depth, to taste them and to learn about the family heritage which is seen often in Portugal, both in cakes and cooking,” she explains. “And that was when I was able to make a deeper connection with the local culture.”
From the north to the south of Portugal, for Juliana, the trip was a total revelation. “I knew very little about Portuguese pastries…basically [I knew] only the ones we have in Brazil, or the more commercial pastries here in Lisbon, like the pastel de nata [custard tart]. I was so surprised by the universe of cakes and pastries all around the country.” Juliana’s favorite discovery was the torta de Guimarães, a delicious pastry very similar to the sfogliatelle ricce, Naples’s famous flaky pastry. But while the pastry’s Italian cousin is filled with ricotta, in the historical Portuguese town of Guimarães, it’s filled with our beloved egg yolk custard. Juliana was also pleased to find parallels with sweets in Brazil; above all, the copious amount of sugar used in pastries on both sides of the Atlantic.
Back in Lisbon, she started planning her own business. In the initial months of the Covid-19 pandemic, she baked in her kitchen at home, delivering directly to customers. Juliana took advantage of the pandemic to fine-tune her concept and recipes, and build up a customer base locally. She opened the shop in São Bento in June 2021, much to the delight of pastry-loving Lisboetas. “I was in doubt about what to do, but I decided to risk it and take the next step,” she says.
Juliana’s signature pastries are as fragrant and flavorful as they are beautiful. “I was trying to share more about my history through the pastries, and then came the idea of using essential oils,” the chef explains. “Sugar is so often vilified, so the idea was to embellish the sugar and the sweets – I mean, pastries aren’t meant to be healthy, but rather with a story to tell. The essential oils were something that my mother used with me and my sisters, and now the scents are a sweet connection to my family.”
The oils – lavender, geranium, orange blossom, bergamot, ginger, cardamom, pink peppercorns, to name a few – add an intense punch of flavor that very few people use in baking. Every pastry has a few drops of organic essential oils made specifically for use in food, which Juliana orders from France. She is the only baker in Portugal using essential oils in her creations.
More recently, the chef has also started catering for weddings and events. “There’s an appetite for that – I love small, bite-sized pastries,” she says. Everything is still all baked in the tiny São Bento shop, but in October 2023, Juliana and her staff will open another kitchen for production. It will be a big month for Juliana, as she also plans to open another shop in partnership with Gleba bakery, and will be hard at work on seasonal partnerships for special editions of cakes and cookies.
In the shop the menu changes every week, with four pastry specials on offer. There are some familiar items: luckily, the the mille-feuille (mil folhas in Portuguese, one of our favorites) is one of them, each week with different fillings – when we visited, it had salted caramel and orange blossom; other times it’s filled with the likes of vanilla, pistachio or tiramisu. “It’s an exercise I do weekly,” Juliana says of creating new pastries. “I’m tasting and testing but in the end a lot comes from my flavor and smelling memory. It’s like magic.”
Many locals stick to the classics when it comes to sweets, but a crowd of followers has fallen in love with Juliana’s creative approach. They can be found lining up at the tiny shop alongside new Lisbon residents from around the world as Juliana’s group of regulars continues to grow. The shop also sells cookies and jams, and in addition to the use of essentials oils, seasonal fruits are another key ingredient in all of Juliana’s sweets. Cookie sandwiches of orange and chocolate, passionfruit cheesecake, and raspberry pie with verbena are just some of the examples of her creative combinations.
Beyond technique and intuition, it’s apparent that there is a lot of love in Juliana Penteado’s pastry shop. “Food is affection,” she says. “People search for that, particularly in sweets and pastries – the reward of the meal, especially when we are children, is the dessert. That reward gives a sense of happiness. Because of that, I feel a huge responsibility, and I try to make my team feel it too. In the end, what I do is more than just sweets.”
Published on October 17, 2023
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