baka ("to bake") is a small, friendly verb that happens to be the perfect place to drill the single most distinctive feature of Icelandic spelling: u-umlaut. Because its stem vowel is a real a, every ending that begins with -u- forces that a to become ö — so "we bake" is bökum and the whole past plural is bökuðum / bökuðuð / bökuðu. Get this verb right and you have internalised a rule that touches thousands of words. Otherwise baka is a completely regular weak Class-1 verb, and it brings useful relatives: the recipe imperative Bakið…, the agent noun bakari ("baker"), and a textbook passive, kakan var bökuð ("the cake was baked").
Conjugation
Class: weak, Class 1 (the -aði preterite). Auxiliary: hafa — ég hef bakað "I have baked."
| Principal parts | |
|---|---|
| Infinitive | að baka |
| 3sg present | bakar |
| 3sg past | bakaði |
| Supine | bakað |
| Person | Present (nútíð) | Past (þátíð) |
|---|---|---|
| ég | baka | bakaði |
| þú | bakar | bakaðir |
| hann / hún / það | bakar | bakaði |
| við | bökum | bökuðum |
| þið | bakið | bökuðuð |
| þeir / þær / þau | baka | bökuðu |
| Person | Present subjunctive | Past subjunctive |
|---|---|---|
| ég | baki | bakaði |
| þú | bakir | bakaðir |
| hann / hún / það | baki | bakaði |
| við | bökum | bökuðum |
| þið | bakið | bökuðuð |
| þeir / þær / þau | baki | bökuðu |
| Non-finite & imperative | |
|---|---|
| Imperative (þú) | bakaðu |
| Imperative (þið) | bakið! |
| Supine | bakað |
| Past participle (m/f/n) | bakaður / bökuð / bakað |
| Middle voice (miðmynd) | bakast — "to be baked / to bake (intr.)" |
Everyday baking
In the present and past singular, baka behaves like any other Class-1 verb — the umlaut only shows up once a -u- ending arrives.
Amma bakar bestu kleinur í heimi.
Grandma bakes the best kleinur in the world.
Ég bakaði köku handa þér.
I baked a cake for you.
Við bökum alltaf piparkökur fyrir jólin.
We always bake gingerbread before Christmas.
Þau bökuðu heilan helling af brauði um helgina.
They baked a whole load of bread over the weekend.
The recipe imperative: Bakið…
Icelandic recipes are written almost entirely in the plural imperative — the þið form, identical to the present þið ending. So a recipe tells you (the cook) what to do with Bakið…, Hrærið…, Setjið… This is the form you will read on every baking blog.
Bakið í 25 mínútur við 180 gráður.
Bake for 25 minutes at 180 degrees. (recipe imperative)
Bakaðu kökuna þangað til hún er gullinbrún.
Bake the cake until it's golden brown. (singular, to one person)
The agent noun and the passive
From baka you get bakari ("baker") and bakarí ("bakery") — note the long í in the building. And baka gives a clean example of the passive, built from vera + the past participle, which must agree with the subject in gender. kaka is feminine, so the participle is the feminine bökuð.
Kakan var bökuð í gærkvöldi.
The cake was baked last night. (passive — feminine bökuð agrees with kakan)
Brauðið er bakað á staðnum.
The bread is baked on site. (neuter brauð → bakað)
Common Mistakes
❌ Við bakum smákökur á sunnudögum.
Incorrect — baka is an a-stem, so -um triggers u-umlaut: bökum
✅ Við bökum smákökur á sunnudögum.
We bake cookies on Sundays.
❌ Þau bakuðu heilan helling af brauði.
Incorrect — the past plural ending begins with -u-, so a → ö: bökuðu
✅ Þau bökuðu heilan helling af brauði.
They baked a whole load of bread.
❌ Kakan var bakaður í gær.
Incorrect — the participle must agree with feminine kakan, so it's bökuð (also umlauted)
✅ Kakan var bökuð í gær.
The cake was baked yesterday.
❌ Bökum í 25 mínútur við 180 gráður.
Wrong form for a recipe — recipes use the plural imperative Bakið, not the 'we' form
✅ Bakið í 25 mínútur við 180 gráður.
Bake for 25 minutes at 180 degrees.
Key Takeaways
- baka / bakar / bakaði / bakað — a fully regular weak Class-1 verb; past tense -aði.
- It is an a-stem, so u-umlaut fires: present við bökum; past *bökuðum / bökuðu; fem. participle *bökuð.
- Compare borga (o-stem) and byrja (y-stem), which never umlaut — only an a becomes ö.
- Recipes use the plural imperative: Bakið í 180 gráður. To one person it's bakaðu.
- Relatives: bakari "baker," bakarí "bakery"; passive kakan var bökuð (participle agrees in gender).
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- Annotated Text: A RecipeA2 — A short original Icelandic recipe for pönnukökur — fully glossed, then unpacked for the recipe register: the 2pl imperative as the default instruction form (Hrærið, Bætið, Setjið, Bakið), measure phrases with af + dative (2 dl af hveiti), accusative objects, and the sequence markers fyrst, síðan, að lokum.
- U-Umlaut as a Sound Alternation (a → ö)A2 — When a u appears (or once appeared) in the next syllable, a stem 'a' is rounded to 'ö' — barn → börn, dagur → dögum, kalla → köllum. This is the living u-umlaut (u-hljóðvarp), an automatic, predictable rounding that explains why so many Icelandic paradigms 'change their vowel'.