The best bakeries in London

Dusty Knuckle can be found in an airy brick-and-steel café/shop across the yard from its original shipping container home in a Dalston car park. Racks of organic rye and sourdough loaves (including an excellent potato version) line the walls, while the counter is piled up with glistening sticky buns, croissants, chocolate and fruit brioches, apple turnovers, savoury bakes and doorstep sandwiches with imaginative fillings – although these are quickly snapped up in the morning. Dusty Knuckle’s owners also have a social conscience, employing and training up young people who have struggled to find work or have been in trouble with the law. They run regular bread-making classes and workshops too. They have another site in Harringay too, which proudly hosts pizza nights.

Specialities: Organic breads, pastries and sandwiches

A cult-worthy French-Asian bakery with branches on Mercer Street in Covent Garden and Duke Street in Marylebone, Arôme combines Parisian patisserie flair with gorge global flavours. Brave the queues and stock up on almond financiers with sea salt, truffle miso slices dusted with amalfi lemon zest and parmesan, chicken hotdog croissants, nori and tomato confit pain suisse and miso bacon escargot with spring onions and coriander. Intense? We wouldn't have it any other way.

Specialities: Crisp croissants and honey french toast

Wander down Peckham Road of a Saturday and you'll see a long, orderly line of chic pastry obsessives queuing on this unassuming tree-lined street for immaculately laminated wares. The inventive menu spans cornbread croissants with gorgeously buttery layers wrapped around rich, meltingly cheesy cornbread, as well as trad saffron buns, yuzu jaffa cake and chocolate sea salt cookies. But part of the joy of this place is the ever-changing line-up of pastries, constantly being handed fresh out of the oven and onto the counter. Toad Bakery also offers sandwiches made with its dense, moist sourdough.

Specialities: Creative croissants and sourdough sandwiches

Sourdough is the aim of the game at Fortitude Bakehouse, which is best known for its banging sourdough cakes and seasonal hot cross buns. Dee Rettali has headed up the kitchen since Fortitude opened in 2018, and this pastry paradise sets itself apart from the rest of London’s craft bakeries thanks to her obsession with the flavours of Marrakech and her regular trips to Morocco for edible ideas. She’s not shy about sharing such inspiration in her refreshingly alt. bakes. There's merguez roll with chunky chermoula and parmesan, the sausages poking suggestively from the croissant-ated hunk and bear claws, infused with almond and orange flower water which come with a Scarface-worthy dusting of icing sugar on top.

Specialities: Sourdough and beignets, which come out at 11am and are swiftly snapped up

For years, Blackstock Road was merely a funnel for fans heading to Arsenal’s old Highbury stadium, but now it’s a proper thriving street with shops, cafés, delis and this incredible outlet. A local institution, Baban’s specialises in naan breads at knockdown prices – although the results are more like flatbreads than the puffed-up tandoori versions you find in every curry house. That’s it, apart from a few variations on the theme when it comes to different flavours such as cheese, sesame, za’atar, garlic, falafel and, very occasionally, a twist on Turkish lahmacun with minced lamb and diced peppers.

Specialities: Naans, naans and more naans.

Bunhead Bakery is the bricks and mortar debut for self-taught baker Sara Assad-Manning. Assad-Manning’s Palestinian heritage is key to what makes her food so important. Of course, there are the buns; lovely, sticky hunks of sweet bread, from pink-glazed rose and cardamom swirls to a juicy baklava-esque take on proceedings and an OG cinnamon offering, as well as one inspired by the Palestinian pudding knafeh, drenched with syrup and studded with wisps of shredded phyllo and rose petals. There are savoury options too, a ‘salty’ bun stuffed with zingy za’atar and crumbles of feta or a vegan-friendly musakhan with spiced red onion and pine nuts. Though most things here veer to the sweeter side of the spectrum, there’s also focaccia, with hot and hearty slabs of potato and mozzarella bread with bouncy middles and crispy bottoms.

Specialties: Sticky buns made with Palestinian flavours. 

From the folks behind Primeur and Westerns Laundry, Jolene is a supremely beautiful warehouse-style space in a quiet spot opposite the park in Newington Green. During the day it runs as a low-key brunch spot and bakery: they stone-mill their own flour in-house using 100 percent unaltered grains grown sustainably on farms in Sussex and Norfolk. We’re fans of their sweet raisin bread, but their bakery counter is regularly loaded with everything from loaves and pastries to sausage rolls, palmiers, madeleines, croissants, financiers, chocolate and Guinness cake, cinnamon buns, and much more besides. Come evening, the blackboards are wiped clean and replaced by a small-plates menu designed to show off the chef’s baking skills. Find more Jolene bakeries across North East London, on Redchurch Street, Colebrooke Row and Hornsey Road. 

Specialities: Home-baked breads and pastries

It may be little more than a hole-in-the-wall behind Dalston’s Ridley Road market, but Ararat’s Middle Eastern-style flatbreads (they call them ‘naans’) are the stuff of legend and find their way into countless restaurants and shops across town – as well serving the needs of hungry local boozehounds. The action centres around a huge rotating oven and a trestle table where the naans are bagged up (hot ones are wrapped in paper, cold ones come in environmentally friendly plastic bags). You can buy them plain, although most people go for the versions topped with meat, cheese or egg; either way, they’re cheap as chips – but far more interesting.

Specialities: Middle Eastern flatbreads, aka naans

The Japanese have embraced the art of French patisserie and become seriously good at it – and now you can get your fix at this gleaming space on Ealing Broadway, as well as at branches in Covent Garden and Marylebone. Wa Cafe’s light, minimalist interior is dominated by two gleaming counters packed with pristine rows of all things baked: spirals of dark-green matcha tea sponge filled with whipped cream; perfectly presented mini pastry tarts; sweet buns filled with red bean paste or custard and so on. There are savoury offerings too, from breads topped with ham and cheese to deep-fried savoury doughnuts filled with delicately spiced curry – they sound so wrong, but they’re so right. Also don’t miss the light, crisp French-inspired choux à la crème flavoured with vanilla, black sesame or green tea. 

Specialities: Japanese patisserie

‘Knowledge is to be shared.’ That’s the simple, beautiful premise behind the world-class and nigh-faultless Bread Ahead bakeries, where recipes are written on chalkboards for all to see and secrets are openly shared at their extensive workshops, school groups and bakery classes. Founded by baker Matthew Jones in 2013, BA started out selling its wares on Borough Market, and you can still visit their original stall for fresh sourdough breads, cheese and olive breadsticks (excellent stuff!), focaccia, croissants, amazing amaretti biscuits and award-winning doughnuts overflowing with silky chocolate and salted caramel. They also have shops in Chelsea, as well as a mega site close to Wembley Stadium, and Bromley.

Specialities: Sourdough breads and doughnuts

Find the chilled out Toklas Bakery next door to the delicious Toklas restaurant. Opened by the founders of Frieze magazine and art fairs – and named after writer and primo bohemian Alice B Toklas – you can feel oodles of artsy energy running through the place. Score a seat in the classy, mid-century canteen-style space and feast on elegant breakfast viennoiserie, with flaky croissants, pain au chocolat, and cardamom buns. At lunchtime things step up a gear, with chunky focaccia sandwiches (the roast chicken with crispy skin and pungent aioli has our heart) and strecci aka Roman-style slices of pizza. Cakes and bakes incorporate seasonal fruits such as rhubarb and even pomello, and there are chocolate cookies for the purists. Then add on a loaf (grain is milled in-house) of aged – or porridge – sourdough bread to take home. 

Specialities: Sweet treats, which come with colourful creams and fruity toppings

Sure, we all baked a bit during lockdown but how many of us actually set up a showstopping bakery? Sourdough Sophia did. This cute Crouch End spot – there's also one on Essex Road now – makes an award-winning wholemeal loaf and focaccia as well as all manner of delcious treats and stacked sarnies. The all-pink branding too, manages to be sweet rather than saccarine.

Specialities: Cruffins – the cheese and Marmite is a smasher 

Open 24 hours a day, this East End institution has been dispensing freshly baked, filled beigels to a mixed crowd of clubbers, drinkers and taxi drivers since it opened its doors on Brick Lane in 1974. We love the classic smoked salmon/cream cheese combo and the brilliant moist salt beef, carved as you wait from a slab kept warm in the front window – as well as the beigels (you say bagel, they say beigel) themselves (boiled before being baked) and pulled fresh from the oven day and night. You can also indulge in a piece of New York-style cheesecake or a super-sweet almond slice if you wish, but ignore the pastry-heavy sausage rolls. A narrow counter caters for those who want to park up and eat in.

Specialities: Bagels, of course

St John Bakery opened its first permanent shop in Neal’s Yard, Seven Dials – and it’s a perfect fit if you fancy a spot of food shopping. Pick out some of their famed Eccles cakes, then nip round to Neal’s Yard Dairy for some crumbly Lancashire cheese. Do buy one of their excellent sourdough, rye or raisin loaves to take home with a bottle of wine from the shop, or simply pig out on their granny-style bakes, which have evolved by fine-tuning 100-year-old recipes. Doughnut connoisseurs will also delight in the sugary, vanilla custard marvels on offer here.

Specialities: Sourdough breads, cakes and pastries

A mere boule’s throw from King’s Cross, this gives punters all the endearing charms of a properly authentic, rustic French boulangerie/patisserie without having to shell out for a trip on the Eurostar. Local workers come here for their daily bread and satisfying lunchtime sarnies, but it’s worth plundering the display of classics – crusty baguettes, rustic saucer-shaped pan bagnats, almond croissants fresh from the oven, pain au chocolat, eclairs and a tip-top version of Paris-Brest (crisp, golden-hued pastry rings filled with a ruff of nutty praline cream). Also look out for their light, sugary and sweetly perfumed bugnes – mini-doughnuts flavoured with orange blossom water. 

Specialties: French boulangerie and patisserie

Since launching in 2010, this family-run, old-world French patisserie has been producing fresh pastries, charming viennoiseries and savouries from its kitchen under the arches on Maltby Street, and they now have a bricks-and-mortar café in Bermondsey where you buy their goodies, drop by for a light lunch or stop off in the evening for some wine and charcuterie. All the specialities are made by hand in the traditional French fashion, from macarons, eclairs, ‘brionuts’ (brioche doughnut), mille-feuilles and croissants to gorgeous pain au chocolat twists. Comptoir Gourmand have been regulars on Borough Market for many years.

Specialities: Viennoiseries and old-school French patisserie

Some of London’s hottest kitchens get their breads from Ben MacKinnon's tiny bakehouse in the arches beneath London Fields station, and E5’s hand-baked wares are top stuff if you’re stocking up on the staff of life. This independent outfit has its own stone mill and uses only organic grains and the finest ingredients to craft fresh, nutrient-rich loaves – most of which depend on 100 percent sourdough ‘starters’. Top buys include the Hackney wild (a classic rustic loaf), the free-form Stockholm, and a spelt and walnut rugbrod (a rye loaf with organic black treacle). You can also use the Bakehouse as a café drop-in for breakfast, a weekday lunch or Saturday brunch, while Sundays means pizzas straight from the bread oven. Also check out their weekly bread-making classes. They also have a mini branch in Poplar.

Specialities: Organic sourdough breads

Lily Jones (aka Lily Vanilli) carved out a solid, celebrity-packed fan base well before opening her own hip bakery in Bethnal Green, and her forays into sculptural, macabre cake creations (gingerbread gravestones, anyone?) set her far apart from the mainstream cupcake clan. These days, she still puts on an innovative show, although space is tight in her gorgeous little courtyard café if you fancy sampling wacky delights such as yuzu lemon tart or pomegranate and black-tea vegan cakes. Lily is only open on weekends, but it’s worth braving the long queues for her salted caramel and banana bundt cakes alone. This place is also a cosy teatime treat, especially after a Sunday trip to Columbia Road flower market (just a skip away).

Specialities: Weird and wacky cupcakes and other bizarre creations

Run by Californian-born cook/designer/stylist Claire Ptak, who made Harry and Meghan’s lemon and elderflower wedding cake, this bakery/café on a Dalston backstreet has a laidback vibe that’s topped off by their twee, pretty treats decorated with real flowers. As a sampler, try something from their seasonally changing line-up of US-style mini buttercream cupcakes (the chocolate violet is floral and fun, but we like the nicely sharp lemon version). They also sell gorgeous cinnamon buns, moist, swirly halva tahini brownies, ‘whoopie pies’ and a choice of creamy cakes such as salted caramel and chocolate – although these are only available in the afternoons. You can buy to take home or eat upstairs in a pretty space done out like a 1960s living room.

Specialities: Pretty, floral, Californian-style patisserie

A family-run business and a Crouch End institution, Dunn’s has been serving up its hand-crafted breads and sweet treats since 1820. Their Broadway loaf flecked with toasted pumpkin, sesame and sunflower seeds in a light rye sourdough is a winning line, but it’s worth looking out for their brioche rolls, vegan cinnamon buns, ginger parkin loaf and other non-dairy items. Dunn’s is also famed for producing doughnuts, fruit flans and luscious, elaborately decorated cream cakes as big as your face, with all manner of designs and themes for celebrations, birthdays and the like. Need a breakfast filler? Try one of their bacon rolls.

Specialities: Hand-crafted breads and cream cakes