Our history
Padoca began with something simple: missing a flavour from home.
Pedro Abrão grew up in Muzambinho, Minas Gerais (Brazil), in a family where food was always part of bringing people together. His mother sold quitandas at her green bettle, his father loved to cook, and his grandmother’s house with the yellow Ipê in the garden was filled with the flavours that would stay with him for years — pão de mel at Christmas, goiabinhas kept in old jars, carrot cake, pão de queijo and a kitchen that always seemed to have room for one more person.
Food was never just food. It was a way to gather, celebrate and show care. Long before Padoca existed, Pedro already loved making little treats for the people around him.
When he moved to Australia on an exchange program, he left behind his work as a pharmacist in Brazil and started building a new life through different jobs. But the kitchen slowly became more and more important.
In 2019, missing the pão de mel he remembered from childhood and his grandmother’s home, Pedro started making his own. What began with adapted recipes, small batches and baking after work soon became something bigger. He delivered orders around Brisbane by bike and bus, kept testing and improving his recipes, invested in equipment and learned most of his craft the way he still loves to learn today: by doing.
Pedro never followed the traditional pastry-school path. Cakes, fillings, doughs and textures were learned through curiosity, instinct, trial and error and years of practice — turning a natural talent into a craft.
What started with pão de mel grew into goiabinhas, cakes, carolinas, brioches, esfihas and the flavours that today make up Padoca.
Seven years later, Padoca is a Brazilian artisan bakery in Brisbane, but the heart of it remains the same: bringing people closer through food.
For Brazilians, that can mean the taste of childhood, school breaks, Sunday coffee, birthday tables or grandma’s kitchen. For someone discovering Brazilian food for the first time, it can be the beginning of a completely new memory.
Since 2019, Padoca still carries the same things it started with: Pedro’s memories of home, the flavours he grew up with, and the community that helped turn a small idea into a Brazilian bakery in Brisbane.
A little piece of Brazil, made in Brisbane.