The best bakery in London
22 places
Al-Jabal Bakery
£Twenty years of made-to-order mana'eesh in Acton - spinach and cheese, or lahem beajin - and a weekend queue drawn from across west London.
Arôme
£Laminated croissants taken seriously, and a miso bacon escargot that has no business working as well as it does.
August Bakery
£Beigel Bake
£Salt beef bagels around the clock on Brick Lane, sold through a hatch to a queue of people at every hour a person can be hungry.
Open 24 hours, every day. The queue at 3am is a genuine London sight.
Bread Ahead
£The creme brulee doughnut is blowtorched in front of you. It started as one Borough stall and is now a bakery school and a small chain.
Cake & Bingsoo
£Bingsoo - shaved milk ice piled with fruit, ice cream and syrup - built for hot weather and shared between a table.
Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley
£Trompe-l'oeil fruit pastries from one of the most decorated patissiers working - the queue starts before opening and the good things sell out.
Sells out early. The queue forms before the doors open.
Chatsworth Bakehouse
£Started as lockdown loaves and is now on the national fifty - the queue on a Saturday morning is the whole of Crystal Palace.
Chinatown Bakery
£Egg tarts and bolo bao made in the window on Newport Place - the queue is usually visible from the gate.
Common Breads
£Flatbreads and manakish straight out of the oven - a bakery counter rather than a restaurant, and cited by more guides than most restaurants here.
E5 Bakehouse
£Sourdough milled and baked under the London Fields arches, with a cafe attached and flour sold by the bag.
Fortitude Bakehouse
£A small Bloomsbury bakehouse a couple of minutes from Russell Square, which is a short list.
Layla
£A Portobello Road bakery doing wood-fired bread and pastries, and one of the few reasons to be at that end of the street on a weekday.
Lily Vanilli
£Open on Sundays for the Columbia Road flower market and largely closed the rest of the week - cakes as the reason, not the afterthought.
Sunday-led, tied to the flower market. Check before travelling midweek.
Pophams
£Pastries at the counter and a small kitchen behind it, so it works as breakfast and as lunch.
St John Bakery
£The custard doughnut that every other London bakery has since tried to copy, sold from a Maltby Street arch.
Suba Bakery
£On the national fifty two years running, and named for its lamination above anything else.
Ta'mini Lebanese Bakery
£All-day manakish and fatayer from a husband-and-wife team, Ali from north Lebanon and Nermin from Beirut - opened in the first lockdown and has been expanding since.
The Café at Clifton Nurseries
££A café inside a glasshouse in the grounds of Clifton Nurseries, a working garden centre on the same Maida Vale site since 1851. Brunch and lunch dishes, bakes and cakes, with a terrace outside.
Daytime only: Monday to Saturday 9:00-17:30, Sunday 10:30-16:30. Typically £10-20 a head.
The Dusty Knuckle
£Bread and sandwiches from a bakery that runs a training programme for young people facing barriers to work - the sandwich is famous on its own merits.
Toad Bakery
£A Camberwell bakery that has been on every best-of list two years running, doing sandwiches and pastries out of a small shopfront.
Violet Cakes
£Claire Ptak's Hackney bakery - the one that made the royal wedding cake, and still a small shop selling cupcakes over a counter.