34 Of The Best Bakeries in London

I love bread, MOB. I really love bread. I could happily eat bread at every meal of every day and never get tired of it. Mainly because there’s just so many different types of bread out there. Rye bread! Pumpernickel bread! Sourdough bread! Challah bread! Wholemeal bread! The list is practically endless, and I love all of those delicious yeastie boys. I’ve even got a soft spot for the occasional loaf of back-to-basics Chorleywood.

If you’re reading this right now then I’m pretty confident that you love bread, too. And I’m also pretty confident that you, like me, find knowing which bakery to hit up for your next fix of bread and a load of other delicious pastries and baked goods to be a difficult task. Because the last thing you want on a lazy Sunday morning is a flat and disappointing croissant when you just know that there are so many brilliant versions of that buttery viennoiserie knocking about, right? Flaky pastry FOMO is the worst, MOB. Which is why I’ve written this guide to the best bakeries in London. A guide to the places that won’t disappoint.

It wasn’t easy, but I’ve narrowed it down to 34 of the city’s best bakeries and patisseries where you can really tell that there’s been love and attention involved at every stage of the bake. These are the bakeries producing bread where you can taste the thresher; where the sourdough has a tang that tells a story about the lactic acid which built-up in the baker’s forearms while they were kneading that very loaf. These are the patisseries where expert hands have carefully crafted every layer of mille-feuille by hand and where the pastry chefs consider the construction of a pain au chocolat to be akin to a fine art.

Hell, a good many of these bakeries even mill their own flour on-site to make sure it’s packed with as much aroma, taste, and essential nutrients as possible. Grab your best tote and be prepared to swaddle a loaf of sourdough in it like it’s an ancient grain-fed baby Moses. These are 34 of the best bakeries in London, MOB. Enjoy.

This family-run coffee house and bakery, based out in Battersea, is who you should be visiting if you want to get a taste of a real-deal Filipino panaderia. Kapihan does the business on a range of sweet and savoury Filipino-style pastries with light and airy pandesal bread being the real hero item on the menu. The pan de coco (a pandan-infused brioche with a coconutty sweet cream filling) and chocolate Spanish bread (a fluffy pandesal filled with a slightly molten mixture of 75% South Cotabato chocolate and hazelnut raw creme) are perfect for pairing with a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

13A Parkgate Road, Battersea, SW11 4NL

Bakes, buns, bread, and coffee – that’s what you can get from Fortitude Bakehouse and, honestly, what more could you possibly ask for from life? Fortitude’s sourdough loaves are complex creations, blessed with just the right amount of satisfying chew and tang; the sticky buns are wonderfully light and sweet; and the hefty slices of cake, which are also made from sourdough, sit somewhere in-between. Whatever carbohydrate you’re in the mood for, Fortitude Bakehouse is guaranteed to satisfy your desire.

35 Colonnade, Bloomsbury, WC1N 1JA

e5 Bakehouse is an East London artisan bakery and coffee shop that is absolutely sourdough mad. The bakers only deploy the finest organic, locally-sourced ingredients in their daily-baked bread and its the unique mixture of flour in all the different loaves they sell that makes e5 Bakehouse one of the very best bakeries in London. The ‘Hackney Wild’, for example, is a country loaf made with a blend of heritage and modern wheat grains whereas the seedy ‘Multigrain’ loaf they bake contains a blend of four flours (including e5 stoneground wheat, Shipton white wheat and Cann Mill rye and spelt). There’s alchemy involved in the dark arts that this bakery employs and you’d be remiss not to find out what makes their bread so magic for yourself.

396 Mentmore Terrace, Hackney, E8 3PH

The freshly baked bread and pastries from this iconic Dalston bakery are the sort of goods that’ll warm you up from the inside out. You can practically taste the love that’s been put into every razor-sharp baguette and rugged loaf. As for the Dusty Knuckle’s goal to train young offenders into responsible professionals so that they can live with dignity, earn a legitimate income, and contribute to society? Well, that just goes to show that these bakes are genuinely life-changing. Head on down to the O.G. spot on Abbot Street, or check online to see if DK’s travelling milk float is going to be in your local area, to pick yourself up a loaf of bread and a pastry for the road.

Abbot Street, Dalston, E8 3DP

This Filipino bakery might be relatively new on the carbohydrate supply scene but they’ve already established themselves as one of the best bakeries in London to get your hands on freshly baked goods. From golden loaves of sweet, signature Panadera bread to brioche-like ensaymada and corned beef hash sandos, the sheer array of options at Panadera Bakery is guaranteed to have your stomach rumbling and your heart racing. This Manila-inspired bakery will make all others seem vanilla in comparison.

83 Kentish Town Road, NW1 8NY

Aries Bakehouse is a salve; a south London bakery where everything appears to be golden and the consistency of the bakes is second-to-none. From the flakiest, tastiest croissants around town to complex and chewy French granary loaves, all of the products which come out of Aries's Brixton-based oven are astonishingly good. You get even get your hands on a cheeky M&M’s cookie – a nostalgic treat that'll send your mind trammelling back through the years and have you gasping for an ice-cold glass of milk.

99 Acre Lane, Brixton, SW2 5TU

This poky bakery on Ridley Road Market does some of the best flatbreads in the whole of London. This is the spot to visit if you’re in the market for a bread that’s wonderfully chewy, easy to tear-and-share, and practically begging to be dragged through a pool of hummus. Affable owner Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal has perfected each and every blistered bread that comes out of Ararat’s intimidating naan oven. Oh, and did I mention you can get those freshly baked beauties topped with everything from cheese and egg to rich and fragrant keema? Because you totally can. It’s affordable, filling, and absolutely the best £2 you’ll ever spend.

132 Ridley Road, Dalston, E8 2NR

What started off as a passion project run out of the Goff family kitchen during Lockdown I has quickly turned into one of the best cinnamon bun-to-mouth delivery systems that London has ever seen. Pastry chef Barney Goff and his little brother Gabriel are the brains behind Buns From Home and the duo work tirelessly to deliver beautiful, bronze buns and bread to a wide array of west London postcodes every Wednesday to Sunday. If you don’t want to get involved in a next day delivery you can always pop down to the physical shop just off Portobello Road. How does a cheesy focaccia croque monsieur and a homemade tiramisu that’s been plopped in a laminated croissant bun sound to you? Because they sound brilliant to me.

128 Talbot Road, Notting Hill, W11 1JA

You won’t find any artisan loaves of ancient rye at this bakery but what you will find is some of the best manakish – a Lebanese flatbread that’s baked in a scorching hot oven and topped with ingredients like salty akawi cheese and ground meat – in the whole of London. In fact, that’s just about all you’ll find. Zeit & Zaatar specialises in manakish, and manakish alone. And you can get just about every topping imaginable at this Shepherd’s Bush staple. Whether you’re after a traditional za'atar manakish or a more avant-garde version topped with cajun chicken and jalapeños, Z&Z will sort you right out.

354 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush, W12 7LL

I am very much on-board The Bread Station bandwagon. Located in London Fields, this bakery places a rare focus on traditional Danish baking principles, using natural fermentation and grain sourced from small British farms to make their crisp, organic loaves of sourdough. As well as sublime loaves of bread, The Bread Station also fires up some cracking pastries. Think croissants that have more layers than an onion and fragrant Swedish kanelbullar which come loaded with crème pattiserie and chopped hazelnuts. Yeah, that'll do.

373 Helmsley Place, Hackney, E8 3SB

Comfortably nestled around Chalk Farm Road, Luminary Bakery is more than just a bakery: it's a social enterprise designed to help women who have had a social and economic disadvantage build a future for themselves. Luminary Bakery uses baking as a tool to take women on a journey to employability and entrepreneurship, equipping them with transferable skills for the working world. They also produce some pretty wonderful bakes, too. The Camden Bakery might be temporarily closed but the Stoke Newington spot is still open and you can order everything from decadent letterbox brownies to their classic carrot cake through their online shop. What could be better than bloody good cake and a bloody good cause?

71-73 Allen Road, Stoke Newington, N16 8RY

Situated a short walk from East Acton station, and nestled right opposite the A40, is Yasmina Restaurant and Bakery – a specialist Arabic bakery that’s about as unassuming as it gets from the outside. Once you’ve stepped inside; however, and felt the warmth of the impressive oven lick at your eyebrows and had the fragrant smell of freshly-baked bread fill your nostrils, you’ll forget all about the traffic outside and focus solely on the piping-hot manakish that Yasmina is famous for. Meat lovers should opt for a flatbread loaded with a mixture of minced meat, onions, tomato and spices (lahm bi ajeen) while vegetarians should make sure to get their chops around the piquant muhammara number.

18 Western Ave, East Acton, W3 7TZ

The sublime Japanese breads and pastries at Happy Sky Bakery are what made it a shoo-in on this list of the best bakeries in London. Head baker Motoko McNulty combines quality ingredients with traditional hand-crafting in order to bring out the very best of her baked goods. Whether it’s a tender loaf of shokupan, a sweet-as-can-be strawberry crunch doughnut, or a chicken karaage egg muffin, every bake that you’ll find arranged neatly in Happy Sky’s drool-worthy glass display is worth a try. It is, nonetheless, worth noting that Happy Sky is only currently open on Fridays and Saturdays. All the best things in life are ephemeral.

4 Askew Road, W12 9BL

Tetote Factory is a top, top bakery that has built itself a loyal following of passionate pastry Dead Heads since it opened up shop on South Ealing Road. This bakery is so popular that you’ve got to place your orders a day in advance (at least) and you’re probably going to be overwhelmed with choice. Not sure what to get? The baguettes and adzuki red bean buns are essential but, to be real with you, it’s hard to go wrong with anything at Tetote Factory. Just get one of everything and call it a day, MOB.

12 South Ealing Road, Ealing, W5 4QA

With multiple shops spread across the city of London, Bread Ahead is one of the more consistent bread and pastry bakery brands around. Their fat, filled doughnuts are what you’ll see plastered all over Instagram but it’s the sourdough loaves, the well-timed flaky pastries, and the rustic baguettes that are the real stars, in my opinion. Bread Ahead’s bread isn’t cheap but it is worth it. Plus, the pistachio pain au chocolat they do is heinously good and they host plenty of online classes so you can learn to bake from home, too.

Various locations

There is a Pophams in Hackney, and there is a Pophams in Islington. Those are both very valid and essentials reasons for you to travel to Hackney or Islington. If you were to ask someone what they consider the best bakery in London to be, there’s about a 40% chance that they’d say, “Pophams” and immediately start fantasizing about a Marmite, Schlossberger, and spring onion twirl. Pophams excels at baking your daily bread while also delivering the goods on the more once-in-a-while kind of treats. It’s staggering how many layers are in Pophams’ rhubarb and cardamom custard pastry and staggering just how many of those I could eat in a sitting if given half the chance. Visit Pophams. Buy a brilliant loaf of sourdough and a treat-yourself pastry. Go home happy.

19 Prebend Street, Islington, N1 8PF

Fabrique is an artisanal stone-oven bakery chain that’s come to London via Stockholm and taken the city by storm. The bread they do is top tier stuff but it’s the pastries where Fabrique’s talented bakers are really given a chance to stretch their legs. The adorable semmelbuns and Ibiza-tanned cardamom buns make the most of punchy aromatics that staid British bakes are often too afraid to experiment with. The result is a range of pastries that are sweet and spicy in equal measure – a balance that too few bakeries are able to achieve. Fabric might be shut for the time being but Fabrique have got plenty of takeaway buns to occupy your jaw.

Various locations

Little Bread Pedlar (or LBP for those that are ITK) is an artisanal pastry and sourdough bread bakery based out in Bermondsey. LBP’s white sourdough is an open-textured, creamy, and full-bodied affair: the sort of bread you dream about tucking under your arm and taking with you everywhere you go. A meticulously refined combination of different flours from different mills is what makes each loaf as deep and complex as a Tolstoy novel while the artistry displayed in the fine and delicate layers of an often-butchered pastry like the kouign amann exhibits the range of the talent possessed by the bakers. Little Bread Pedlar isn’t just one of the best bakeries in London. It might just be its very best.

Unit 4-6, Spa Business Park, Dockley Road, SE16 3FJ

“Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor.” Right, okay, now I’ve got that out of my system let’s talk about why Flor is one of the best bakeries in London. Created by the same team behind the highly acclaimed Lyle’s, Flor is a lovely little hatch in Bermondsey that you can find flogging pastries, bread, and sandwiches. Flor’s sourdough (which is made with a stoneground organic white flour blended with 'Old Welsh' wheat and heritage rye) has got us through some pretty dark times. So, too, have their delicate croissants and regularly changing arsenal of seasonal pastries. You can tell that the people at Flor know what they’re doing. You can taste the care.

Unit 6, Spa Road, London, SE16 4RP.

Eccles cakes, brownies, and sugar-dusted doughnuts. Sourdoughs, rye loaves, and raisin loaves galore. You can find all that (and more) at either of the St. JOHN Bakery hatches that are currently open for business on Borough Corner and Druid Street. Considering St. JOHN’s esteemed pedigree, you shouldn’t be surprised that most of the baked goods and hot cakes sell out faster than, well, hot cakes and I’d recommend pre-booking your order ahead of time to avoid disappointment. Especially if you want to ruin a clean shirt with one of the best doughnuts in town.

72 Druid Street, SE1 2HQ

Violet Cakes is a bakery in East London that’s fast become famous for its American-style cupcakes with seasonal buttercreams as well as its whoopie pies, birthday cakes, and quiches. Owner and head baker Claire Ptak used to work as a pastry chef for Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in California and has brought all her years of experience with her to… Dalston, of all places. Boy, am I glad that Claire made the move, though. All of her cakes are baked with organic and low-intervention ingredients (like Madagascan vanilla pods and pure cane molasses) that add a depth of flavour to every rhubarb and kumquat or vanilla jam cake she makes. There is no-one else in the city that’s making cakes like Claire Ptak. No-one.

47 Wilton Way, Hackney, E8 3ED

East Finchley’s finest sourdough bread, sourdough pastries and babka can all be purchased, as warm and fresh as a YMC shirt, from Margot Bakery. The crack team of egg-cracking experts bake with organic, free-range eggs from Rookery farm which are delivered fresh every week and even the brioche and croissants are leavened with sourdough. It’s that attention to detail and borderline-obsessive focus on the provenance of the ingredients that gives every bake they make an extra layer of depth and richness.

121 E End Road, N2 0SZ

Pavilion Bakery is one the best bakeries in London to see and be seen at. Sourdough bread and pastries are the specialities at all three of Pavilion’s northeast London locations as well as its snazzy new set-up in Newquay. I’d recommend paying a visit to whichever bakery is closest to you at the next available opportunity. Pavilion’s always been about sourcing within seasons and using the best possible local ingredients where possible. Tear off a chunk of Pavilion’s baguette, slather it with a generous pat of salted butter, and sit back in ecstasy.

130 Columbia Road, E2 7RG

Heritage grains, baby: they’re complex, resilient, delicious, and make for some absolutely slobber knocker breads and pastries. Big Jo uses field blend populations of heritage grains which are sewn directly into the grass and milled into flour on site at the bakery to ensure that every loaf they sell is packed with as much natural goodness as possible. That’s obviously all well and good but you probably want to know what the bakes at Big Jo actually tastes like, right? Well, they’re brilliant. Like, all of them. Everything from light and airy croissants to dense and decadent chocolate ganache-topped Guinness cake is an exemplars of its genre. Big Jo is all killer, no filler.

318-326 Hornsey Road, Finsbury Park, N7 7HE

Raluca Micu is a one-woman baking machine and her Askew Road bakery is the perfect example of why local businesses matter. Micu makes wonderful artisan hand-made sourdough (baked with Shipton Mill organic flour and heaps of love) and in pre-pandemic times did some pretty banging pastries, too. October 26 is only open on Friday and Saturday with a limited number of loaves available, so make sure to get their early for a hot takeaway loaf.

153 Askew Road, W12 9AU

Patisserie Saint Anne is a cute and cosy little patisserie, based out in Hammersmith, that has over 20 years of experience in producing delicious cakes, pastries and chocolates. The bakers and pastry makers have definitely satisfied Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule and the proof is in the delicate viennoiserie they serve. Patisserie Saint Anne’s pain au chocolat and pain au raisin would give any Parisian bakery a run for its bakery with their selection of freshly baked gateaux being equally deserving of your attention. The tarte aux fraise, which carefully balances the natural sweetness of strawberries with a rich crème pâtissière, is a dream.

204 King Street Hammersmith, W6 0RA

The BAO Bakery Goods counter at Cafe BAO has almost single-handedly made King’s Cross a must-visit area for baked goods. Inspired by the western-style yōshoku cafes dotted across Asia, Cafe BAO has got some of the most unique bakes available for purchase in the whole of London. There’s nowhere else in the city that you can get your mitts on a bag of dinky buns filled with molten chocolate and cherry chunks, runny salted egg custard, or sweet red bean and white chocolate. And, even if there was, I doubt they’d do them half as good as Cafe BAO.

4 Pancras Square, Kings Cross, N1C 4AG

*insert Dolly Parton reference here*

Jolene is one of the best bakeries in London for much of the same reasons that its sister, Big Jo, is one of the best. Both of them bake bread, cakes and pastries with soul; placing a razor-sharp focus on ancient and heritage grains. Jolene’s cakes – which range from gloriously burnt Basque cheesecakes to zesty Victoria sponges – should be essentials on your click and collect hit list. The best plan of attack when visiting Jolene is to pick up a loaf of their bread along with one sweet and savoury item each. That’ll net you a hefty brown bag full of delicious baked goods and a weekend’s worth of serotonin.

21 Newington Green, Mayville Estate, N16 9PU

Grab-and-go pastries don’t get much better than this, MOB. Philippe Conticini is a legend of pâtisserie and both of his eponymous Londoncafés are home to some of the finest gourmet pastries on this side of the channel. Paying a visit to Phillipe Conticini is like paying your respects to the butter gods. His Paris Brest is a thing of delicate, complicated beauty; his vanilla flan a reminder of what heights custard can achieve; and his pain au chocolat, a pastry so layered and flaky that it makes all pretenders seem a sham. To quote Tina Turner, Phillippe Conticini is “simply the best”.

The Stables, Chalk Farm Road, Camden Town, NW1 8AH

They say that a jack of all trades is a master of none and that certainly rings true for the razor-sharp ethos behind Baban’s Naan. With its singular focus of baking the best of those eponymous flatbreads as humanly possible, this tidy Finsbury Park bakery is an undisputed master of naan. The chewy, blistered teardrop-shaped breads that come straight from the tandoor are piping-hot and easier to tear apart than a piece of A4 paper. The ultimate move™ is to get one of your naans showered in aromatic za’atar and the other done up peshawari-style for dessert. That’s the perfect two-naan dinner, MOB.

51 a, Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park, N4 2JW

When Felicity Cloake, the author of One More Croissant For The Road and all-around croissant expert, says that a bakery makes the best croissants in London then you better listen. Aux Pains De Papy is a lovely rustic French bakery that offers traditional hand-made goods that are all guaranteed to be eaten in a flash. Their Viennois loaf sits somewhere between bread and brioche and should absolutely be sitting in your stomach. As for the rest of the Viennoiserie? Well, they're as flaky and perfect as you'd ever want or expect. A bit like George Clooney would be if he kept standing you up on Hinge dates.

279 Grays Inn Road, WC1X 8QF

Hampstead Heath is already a pretty objectively lovely place but the fact that Karma Bread also calls that area home makes it even lovelier. As one of the best bakeries in London, Karma Bread offers a wide array of baked goods that take inspiration from everything from traditional Jewish recipes and New York delis. Karma’s challah bread is the stuff of legend and their dark, dense and delicious New York rye is one of the few versions in the city that wouldn’t look out of place in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Make sure to return consistently to check out the daily bread specials. They’re – y’know – special.

13 S End Rd, Hampstead, NW3 2PT

Popular with Shepherd’s Bush locals and anyone looking to get a taste of the Fertile Crescent, Damascene Bakery is perennially busy. Its wood-fired oven is always rammed with golden discs of manakish and cheese-filled Viking longboats of Syrian-style fatayer. Damascene’s specials menu is hard to ignore with toppings like basturma (aka pastrami) and cheese sitting pretty alongside sweeter options such as crème fraîche and honey. All options considered, though, it’s hard to ignore the pull of a simple cheese manakish. That bread, which is crisp at the edges and tender in the middle, makes the perfect pedestal for salty, molten cheese.

264 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush, W12 7JA

This independent bakery on Munster Road really is the Little Sourdough Kitchen that could. A real underdog of a bakery that shows the value of optimism and hard work. Open from 7:30am to 3:30pm every day, the bakers at Little Sourdough Kitchen specialise in making fresh and organic sourdough bread and pastries by hand. The rough-hewn loaves and spiky baguettes are what’ll bring you to their premises in the first place but it’s hard to leave without also picking up a cinnamon twist and a pot of homemade tiramisu.

237 Munster Road, Fulham, SW6 6BT