The best bakeries in Los Angeles

Best for: Baguettes, pastries, cakes, pies
Some preliminary advice before visiting République: Should the phrase “Hold the bread, please” cross your mind, hold your tongue instead. The La Brea restaurant’s James Beard award-winning pastry chef and co-owner, Margarita Manzke, serves freshly baked breads and pastries morning, noon and night, so you can order one of her incredible croissants for breakfast, the quiche of the day for lunch or a baguette to sop up those pan drippings from the dinner menu. The only catch? They don’t replenish the pastry stock throughout the day, so once an item is gone, it’s gone. (Don’t worry, they stock dozens of items daily, so we’re sure you’ll find something else to fall in love with.)

Best for: Pies, whole and by the slice
After years as one of L.A.’s most acclaimed pop-up bakers, Nicole Rucker’s stall inside of Grand Central Market and her newer Culver City café have become two our favorite places in Los Angeles for pie. The light-as-air Key lime pie is a must-order if it’s your first visit, as is any sort of treat that spotlights the season’s sweetest, freshest produce in the region—be it a kind of fruit-driven custardy chess pie, a fresh-from-the-oven banana blondie, or a flaky-crusted hand pie bursting with berries. Rucker lets the ingredients shine, especially in the sweets, but you can occasionally find savory pies as well, and the cookies are killer as well, with the sort of addicting mix of chewy and snappy you’d be hard-pressed to find almost anywhere else the city.

On weekend mornings, this worker-owned bakery in Atwater Village seems to be the hottest place to be in Northeast L.A. Locals drop in for morning coffee and baked goods like buttery croissants and brioche toast slathered with local jam. The caffeine is tops here, don’t get us wrong, but lines out the door mostly appear around noon, when the bakery brings out its famous sandwiches and tartines. Options include the likes of marinated beets, herb pesto and goat cheese; or salami, manchego and chive butter (plus some vegetarian options) on lightly salted, still-warm-from-the-oven mini baguettes. Grab one—they go fast!—and snag one of the few seats on the sidewalk patio, where you’ll get a vista of pretty much the entire Village while you sip your coffee. Plus, Proof makes one of our favorite chocolate chip cookies in the city.

Best for: Bread loaves, pies, coffee cake, doughnuts
Since 2015, Bub and Grandma’s amazing bread has captured the hearts (and stomachs) of diners at some of L.A.’s finest restaurants, but baker Andy Kadin’s plan all along was a sandwich shop inspired by NYC tristate delis. His dream is now realized at this sunny daytime-only spot in Glassell Park serving all the manner of heavenly sandwiches and pastries. The passion fruit doughnut is a dream, as is the banana cream pie, but you shouldn’t leave here without trying at least one of the sandwiches. (We like the vegan-friendly Rainbow, which mixes curried tofu, pickled vegetables, avocado and tahini spread.) Just be sure to prepare yourself for the wait, which stretches out even on the weekdays.

Best for: Croissants, other laminated pastries
Forget the hype about Fondry—this Pasadena chocolatier’s laminated pastries are the ones to beat. Most days of the week, the cozy space is packed with folks sipping coffee and biting into the lightest, flakiest croissants in all of Los Angeles. The signature pain au chocolat is CAR’s most popular pastry, and while we’ve yet to find a better almond variety, the plain croissant is no slouch either. A handful of fruit and savory danishes and a turkey-Gruyere croissant round out the pastry menu here, but don’t be put off by the limited selection; these are the best croissants in Los Angeles, and believe us, we’ve tried them all.

Best for: Croissants, other laminated pastries, breads
Run by Clémence de Lutz, one of the main pastry masterminds behind the Gourmandise School, and Friends & Family alum Tony Hernandez, this newer gourmet bakery in Santa Monica serves some of the absolute best pastries on the Westside as well as some of the best croissants in Los Angeles. Lines tend to form early, and while the croissants often run out early, there’s always something delicious in one way or another behind the glass (and yes, these pastries are often made with the same exact dough). Lutz and Hernandez pride themselves on using locally sourced flour varieties, milk from Straus Family Creamery, fruit from the Santa Monica Farmers Market, imported French butter and more ethically sourced chocolate, for higher quality you can taste. Savories like ham and cheese croissants and seasonal fruit danishes round out the tiny pastry case here, and while we can’t guarantee everything will be available when you come in, we can guarantee it’ll be delicious—and quite likely worth the wait.

Best for: Bread loaves, croissants, morning buns, cookies, hand pies
Roxana Jullapat and Daniel Mattern’s daytime-only bakery and café makes some of the best baked goods in town, including bread made with locally sourced heirloom grain. The rustic loaves have even made Jullapat—the pastry chef half of the duo—famous nationwide via her cookbook, Mother Grains. Beyond bread, Friends & Family also makes pastries, quiche and cookies, and the brunch menu is no slouch, either. Buckwheat pancakes and olive-oil–fried eggs are worth savoring from the sunny spot in East Hollywood, but we’re also more than content grabbing a quick hand pie and some Danishes. Our words of advice? Order a little of everything, no matter your time limitations, and grab a few pastries for later, too. You’ll be glad you did.

Best for: Pan dulce
Since 1952, this Boyle Heights institution has served some of the city’s best pan dulce. While their iconic crunchy-sweet conchas—as well as the tamales—have kept Angelenos coming back for decades, La Mascota also makes great wedding cookies, flan and bolillos (a shorter, savory bread related to the baguette). The extensive pan dulce selection also includes adorable puerquitos (pork-shaped cookies made with piloncillo, or raw cane sugar), sugar-dusted gusanos (sweet bread rolls) and a host of other traditional Mexican goodies worth adding to your pastry box.

Best for: Vegan baked goods
After the success of her mostly-vegan pastry kiosk in Chinatown’s Far East Plaza, French Laundry and Konbi alum Jen Yee has finally gone brick-and-mortar inside a shared space within the trendy Victor Heights dining complex at 1027 Alpine Street. (It’s the same set of converted bungalows that currently house Perilla LA and Heavy Water.) Her wonderfully flaky croissants, including a standout savory furikake variety, chewy cookies and delicious coffee cakes topped with seasonal fruit are some of the best plant-based baked goods in town—but they easily hold their own against other bakeries that use milk, butter and eggs. Thanks to Yee’s skill and tireless experimentation, even the biggest butter lovers would have difficulty telling the difference upon first bite. Be sure to show up early—as in right-when-it-opens early—because these treats do go quickly.

Best for: cookies
If you’re a Westside cookie lover, there’s no better place in town than—unexpectedly—the United Oil gas station on National Boulevard, where you’ll find Zooies inside the We Got It! convenience store. There’s a dizzying number of cookies and dessert bars on offer, including at least three different twists on chocolate chip: Chewie, brown butter and Gooie (the most popular, and our recommendation for first-timers). Although you may need to call for a preorder, Zooies even offers paleo, vegan and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, as well as a sugar-free cookie geared towards diabetics. Elsewhere in the glass display, you’ll also find more whimsical cookies dreamt up by head baker Arezou Appel, including a s’mores cookie topped with burnt marshmallow, fruity delights like strawberry shortcake and even a baklava-inspired cookie topped with dusted pistachios.

Best for: Cinnamon buns, tartines, croissants
With four locations (Venice, North Hollywood, Hollywood and Pasadena), Superba’s baked-goods empire has grown from its original tiny Westside outpost—and for that we are glad. The more expansive all-day cafés in Venice and Hollywood offer toasts, salads and sandwiches, while the coffee-oriented outposts in NoHo and Pasadena serve a smaller selection of food, including Superba’s standout tartines. But every location’s pastry case comes stuffed with the likes of croissants, citrus-zested cinnamon buns, scones, cookies and more—all worth an order (or a few orders; good luck staying away from these spots).

Best for: Bread loaves, babka
Named for its prodigal young baker, this tiny bakery next door to pizza-focused Ghisallo and Layla Bagels makes some of freshest, best-tasting bread on the Westside. Seeded sourdough, braided challah, marbled rye and a stunning olive-stuffed fougasse—Jyan Isaan Horowitz has taken the skills he picked up at Gjusta and crafted a breadmaking style that’s entirely his own. For sweet tooths, he also makes plush cinnamon raisin brioche and chocolate babka. While Jyan Isaac often sells out early, you can often find a handful of loaves available for sale next door at Ghisallo, and the bakery also pops up at the Venice, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades and Larchmont farmers’ markets.

Best for: Danish bread and pastries, princess cake
Open Wednesday through Sunday, with plenty of hot coffee in tow, this Westside bakery is a great way to start your morning off right. Everything is light, well-made and affordable, at least relative to the most options on this list. Plus, Copenhagen Pastry is one of the city’s only traditional Danish bakeries, so you know you’re getting the good stuff. On your first visit, you’ll probably want to eat everything in sight: the fruit-filled spandauers (a.k.a. Danishes), the braided cinnamon rolls, the macaroons, the nougat crowns straight out of the oven. The kringle, filled with almond paste and custard, is a must-try, though you really can’t go wrong with anything behind the case. For special occasions, Copenhagen offers a few cakes, including a hard-to-find Swedish princess cake made with housemade raspberry jam, vanilla custard and sponge cake.

Best for: Cinnamon rolls
We scoured the city for amazing cinnamon rolls, and while the enormous cream cheese-slathered version at Lodge Bread has its merits, we’ve yet to find a better version than Christopher Federici’s Gooey Center Bakery. Fluffy, soft and coated in just the right amount of frosting, these buns are worth chasing across town. Best of all, they happen to be plant-based—though omnivores likely won’t be able to taste the difference. On various days of the week, Federici also hands off plenty of buns to several specialty coffee shops around town: You’ll find a matcha variety exclusively available at Koreatown’s 6xs Coffee, though you can find the blueberry and standard buns elsewhere as well. To find out where Gooey Center is popping up near you, follow the bakery on Instagram.

Best for: Pan dulce
If a trip to Boyle Heights’ La Mascota isn’t in the cards, this local bakery and café chain serves delicious Mexican pan dulce from 12 convenient locations, including outposts in Santa Monica and Hollywood. The signature seashell pattern conchas, fruit-filled sugary taquitos and flaky, buttery orejas (also known as palmiers) are worth grabbing for an afternoon pick-me-up. Don’t miss out on their housemade champurrado—a masa-thickened hot chocolate—or, if you need a jolt of caffeine, La Monarca’s signature café de olla, which uses organic coffee beans, Mexican cinnamon and brown sugar.

Best for: Vegan cakes, cookies, and more
From an Instagram bakery operation to one of L.A.’s favorite vegan bakeries, Just What I Kneaded is now known citywide for its delicious plant-based cakes, cookies and pies. (Plus, many of them are gluten-free!) Self-taught baker Justine Hernandez whips up entirely plant-based scones, cookies, cinnamon rolls and more from a Frogtown brick-and-mortar, with a full coffee program and a sunny, casual outdoor patio. If you get there quick enough, you can usually catch some of the daily savory breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos before they sell out, and they’re positively stuffed with plant-based cheese, eggs and meats—as well as seasonal veggies—to get you through the day.

Best for: Bread loaves, pan dulce, cookies
Down in Long Beach, Arturo Enciso’s artisanal panaderia integrates heirloom grains into the art of traditional Mexican pastry-making. Alongside rustic loaves studded with seeds, Gusto Bread serves an array of new-school pan dulce, including conchas, orejas and nixtamal queens—Gusto Bread’s masa-based twist on French kouign-amann. The pan de maiz, made with freshly milled heirloom corn and wildflower honey, will make you rethink your love of American-style cornbread, and we think the guava-marmalade-stuffed pastelitos is the ideal way to start a weekend morning. For a twist on tres leches cake, order the atole cake, which sits on a bed of cream flavored with the traditional Mexican corn drink and comes topped with whipped cream flavored with Andean corn white ganache.

Best for: Cake
This L.A. institution, best known for its pricey triple berry cake, has been through hell and back. At the end of 2023, Sweet Lady Jane appeared to close for good, but the bakery-café was saved three months later when Julie Ngu, the owner of Pacific French Bakery, decided to purchase and reopen the business. Now, the bakery’s four locations (Encino, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Santa Monica) are all open again, with the same dozen-plus cake recipes that first put Sweet Lady Jane on the map back in early ’90s. While new management has yet to bring the pastry display back to its full glory, you’ll still find cupcakes, cookies, brownies and other small treats, as well as Sweet Lady Jane’s excellent pear almond tart.