COMPANY

Take a look at our company and discover how we work.

BAKING BISCUITS AND PUFF PASTRY IN PALENCIA

“TRADITION AND SWEETNESS” Pastas y Hojaldres Uko was founded in 1958. We make handmade products such as the famous Socorritos (puff pastry), Lazos al Chocolate (puff pastry covered with chocolate), Pisuerguinas (breakfast cookie), Pastas Finas de Té (fine biscuits), Tortos de Almendra, Sequillos, … and other few sweets well known in the national market. Activity started as a café, in the center of the village of Cervera, where Raquel began to make her so special and exquisite puff pastry cakes. She also had the entrepreneurial help of her brothers Luis, Pepe and Angel (Uko).
Uko was the one, together with Raquel, who decided to continue with the business, Moving the small workshop Café Florida to an old family sawmill where to face the growing needs of the moment. Things were going well so in 1988 the new factory was finished, located on the outskirts of town, which would allow to increase its productive capacity, as well as the number of workers. It was also a good opportunity to expand the range of products and enter to new markets. Currently, those who perform the functions of management and administration of the company are nephews and 3rd generation of the founders, keeping the same recipes and procedures used by their predecessors. Also, new products and recipes have been released.
RAQUEL CABEZA
ÁNGEL CABEZA
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  • alejandro pastas uko
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KNOW OUR HISTORY

A sweet adventure

1957

Year of fundation of Pastelería Uko (old company name), by Raquel Cabeza. She began its journey in a small establishment in the center of Cervera de Pisuerga.

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1963

She decided to join a convent as a cloistered nun for 5 years, leaving the business created in the hands of her brothers.

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1968

We moved to a larger workshop to expand the market and diversify the product offer.

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1988

Year in which the new factory was just built, that will serve to separate the production in two different locations. The old workshop will be used to make cakes and pastry. The new factory will be where the famous Socorritos, Pastas Finas de Té and the Línea Desayunos be made.

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2016

Generational change. Nephews and grandchildren go on to manage the family business, modernizing processes and creating new artisan and quality products.

BAKE OF BISCUITS AND PUFF PASTRY IN PALENCIA

Our factory is located in Cervera de Pisuerga, Palencia. In addition to the factory, we also have a small store where we sell our products directly to the public.

With approximately 2500 square meters of facilities, well distributed between factory, warehouse and offices, we try to modernize production processes, as well as all the infrastructure that our company consists of. In other words, we will be more energy efficient, improve working conditions, reduce costs and develop new products in order to satisfy our consumer.

FOOD SAFETY AND CONTROL

The production process begins with the purchase of quality raw materials. Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, etc. they come from major brands in the food sector, which guarantees us security levels that go beyond those of the law itself.
Once manufactured, our products undergo rigorous analysis for their correct traceability. It is about detecting critical points in any of the production phases and in this way avoid possible risks to the health of consumers.

Risks of a biological nature and/ or risks of a physical nature are full controlled thanks to this combination of techniques.

COMMITMENT AND VALUES

Since ideas keep changing, like markets and products, in Pastas Uko we seek to combine research, innovation and development with one of the principles that gave rise to this family business: QUALITY.

So our target is focused on being closer to the customer, knowing their needs and, of course, taking care of our most valuable asset: the employees.

We are aware of the depopulation and lack of resources that rural areas suffer. Therefore, we try to collaborate with our region of the Montaña Palentina, offering employment, with solidarity participations, respecting the environment, and more initiatives.

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Ángel Cabeza

He was a working man, with well-defined principles and values, who had no choice but to move forward with a family of 7 children.

In his beginnings, wing through the years 50, he was engaged in carpentry. Family and friends to study fine arts in Madrid to maintain his family unit.

By then, Uko spent his free time helping his brothers and sisters in the café Florida, at the same time that he learnt basic notions of pastry that his sister Raquel taught him. Years later, when Raquel decided to leave the convent, it was the time to change the saw, the sandpaper and the hammer for the scales, the mixer and the spatula.

First, they would use the old sawmill as a workshop to later move to the new factory where, as anecdote, fifty workers were reached on time.

Uko´s functions have been several: from directing the production to taking care of the maintenance of machines and facilities, going through making purchases of raw materials or establish contacts with suppliers. All this without having received any professional training. Just with the effort and dedication from day to day and the desire to raise a family and a laborious project with his sister Raquel.

Raquel Cabeza

Her history is that of a woman made into herself, whose beginnings weren´t esay at all. Being the only woman among her brothers, she was the one who decided, in 1957, to travel to León to learn the trade in a well- known pastry shop in the city.  A period of effort and sacrifice, in which she not only learned to elaborate pastries, cakes and other sweets, but also she found the formula to work the puff pastry in a very special way. This is how the today known as Socorritos were born, in honor to her mother Socorro, although at that time she baptizes them as Raquelitos.

The next year she returned to her native town, Cervera de Pisuerga, to open, with her brothers, the Florida cafe. It´s then when she has the opportunity to start to elaborate and to market that fine puff pastry that so much characterized her.

Years later, in 1965, Raquel receives the call of the religious vocation, and it´s when she decides to enter the Cistercian convent of San Andrés de Arroyo in Palencia. She proposes to set up a workshop there, as a means of financing the monastery, where to continue making her exquisite puff pastry, in addition to training the sisters.

Meanwhile, Raquel´s mother starts to get sick, what causes that she must leave the convent to take care of her. Then the opportunity came to open, with her brother Ángel (Uko) the second village workshop in an old family sawmill-

Since nothing was being easy in the beginning, the setback is added that the sisters of San Andrés registered the trademark of Raquelitos, so Raquel was forced to rename as Socorritos her famous puff pastry bows.

This anecdote would not take away the illusion of continuing to believe in her formulas, but it encouraged her to continue innovating and creating other new products as delicious as the Socorritos.