Give Us This Day: A Vittles Bakery Project

The Ten Best Bakeries in London

A Vittles guide, by James Hansen, Jessica Wang, Jonathan Nunn, Ruby Tandoh, and Adam Coghlan

Aug 02, 2024

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This article is part of Give Us This Day: A Vittles London Bakery Project.
This is the last piece in this two-week series. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. To read the rest of the essays and guides in the project, please click here. And please share it far and wide! Note, the guides in this project are for subscribers only.

And to read the companion guide to this top 10, what we’ve called Around London in 56 Bakes, please click here.

The Vittles London Bakery Guide

The ten best all-round bakeries in the capital. By James Hansen, Jessica Wang, Jonathan Nunn, Ruby Tandoh, and Adam Coghlan. Illustration by Alex Brenchley.

From cakes and cookies to buns and loaves of bread, spanning sweet and savoury, artisan and wholesale, these are the 10 bakeries in London, which our group of writers and bakery enthusiasts deem to be the best all-round in the city: the places that most faithfully reflect London as a truly great and plural capital of bakeries.

The Best Cake Bakery

Lincoln’s Patisserie

Recently, I turned up to a wake in Edmonton with no food to offer, so I made a quick detour to Lincoln’s Patisserie, a Caribbean bakery on an estate near Silver Street. Online discussions of Caribbean takeaway spots are usually hyper-critical of perceived failings, but Lincoln’s is one of the rare few I have never heard anyone say a negative word about – a reflection of its unimpeachable patties and its exceptional range of simple cakes. This time I came hoping to get a few slices of the carrot cake, but was told it was cheaper to get a whole cake at £15 (!), which was enough to feed a dozen people, easily. This is a cake that looks unassuming but reveals its brilliance in the mouth – the integrity of the crumb, the moistness of the interior, the balance of spice and sugar. After I left, I got a phone call from my dad asking me where the cake was from and telling me that everyone at the wake was talking about it – it’s one of those cakes. Jonathan Nunn

287 Brettenham Rd, N18 2HF

The Best Nordic Bakery

Bageriet

Statistically, I am more likely to be Bageriet-bound from Leicester Square station than any other place, even Chinatown. Sandwiched between Covent Garden to its right and Piccadilly to its left, this Swedish bakery boasts an accessibility score of 10/10 and a street name – Rose Street – that renders it all almost too idyllic to be true.

For most first-timers, it is the heavily alluring Nordic scent of kanelbullar that draws them through the bakery’s door. However, Bageriet was first brought to my attention as ‘the biscuit shop’ by a fellow baked-good-enthusiast. Get baker/owner Daniel’s line-up of bitar – traditional Swedish miniature tarts which make the extraordinary out of what I assumed was ordinary – and also the vaniljhärta: a film of shortbread encasing a gooey vanilla custard heart, the daintier Swedish answer to the Great British custard cream. Crucially, tucked away in the refrigerated counter at the back of the bakery is the unassuming krämbulle, which has soon become, out of all of Bageriet’s treasures, my favourite child. A deceptively simple ‘cream bun’ to the eye, the krämbulle – an insulated mass of thick, chilled vanilla cream under the protection of a sweet cardamom-scented dough – is so much more. With a scatter of sugar to finish, it becomes everything the perfect doughnut aspires to be, but very rarely is. Jessica Wang

24 Rose St, WC2E 9EA