Meet Magnus Ericsson, co-founder of Viking Bageri and engineer turned master baker now selling some of the best baguettes in Dubai.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:11 My life as an engineer has been quite international.
00:13 I've worked in Europe and I worked in Africa.
00:16 Then I was offered the position as CEO for
00:18 a hospital group here in the UAE and we
00:20 moved to Dubai five and a half years ago.
00:22 Life in Dubai with our family was great and then COVID happened.
00:27 Because I work in a hospital,
00:29 you become scared.
00:30 You want to make sure that your family is okay.
00:32 So you kind of isolate,
00:34 but also you need to have something which
00:37 can help you get your focus away from that.
00:41 My dad always used to bake when I grew up,
00:44 but the thing that he never made was crispy French baguettes.
00:47 So I said to myself,
00:48 I'll try to make my own baguette.
00:50 It was the best feeling
00:52 because it's something that you've done with your hands.
00:55 It's very tactile.
00:56 I can feel the dough going from one stage
00:59 into where that dough is actually working together with me.
01:04 After a few hours, you have this beautiful baguette.
01:06 You take it out from the oven, you can smell it,
01:08 you can listen to it, you can taste it.
01:11 That actually struck a tone in me that it's
01:13 very rewarding to just be able to bake your own bread.
01:16 Even though the universe as a whole had a pretty rough time,
01:20 this place was my place where I could just feel good.
01:24 We started gifting the bread to our neighbors.
01:27 And then my German neighbor came and said,
01:29 "Magnus, this baguette is actually the best I've had in Dubai."
01:32 And that's when I said to myself that now I need to perfect it.
01:36 I need to bake the best baguette in Dubai.
01:39 Then the engineering started.
01:41 I changed the amount of salt, the type of flour,
01:44 the temperature of the water,
01:45 every single thing that I could change,
01:48 I changed to see what would happen.
01:50 And I baked bread every single night,
01:52 probably 12, 15 baguettes per day.
01:55 The neighbors that I gave it away to
01:57 started giving to their neighbors and their friends.
01:59 And all of a sudden, we have people all over Dubai
02:01 ordering the bread.
02:03 People were calling and chatting with him on Instagram
02:07 all the time, and I realized that, wow,
02:09 there's a huge demand for his bread.
02:11 I had to do something about this.
02:13 So that's how we started Viking Baguette.
02:15 People were ordering the bread almost two months in advance.
02:19 So that's when we said, maybe we should do this
02:21 from a bakery.
02:23 To be able to share my passion with my team
02:26 and see them actually growing the same kind of passion
02:29 that I have, it's extremely rewarding.
02:31 I only wanted to bake the best baguette in Dubai
02:33 and success followed.
02:35 So I truly believe that if you're passionate about something,
02:38 you can turn it into something successful in Dubai.
02:42 We look forward to seeing Viking Baguette growing
02:44 and hopefully expand it to the rest of the UAE,
02:47 the region, and then who knows, the world.
02:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:54 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:58 (upbeat music)