The Best Bakeries in the United States

The sourdough starter for the bagels here is fed with imported Brooklyn water, a detail that tells you exactly where this deli-bar's loyalties lie. Grossman's is a relaxed Jewish-style deli and cocktail bar in Santa Rosa, turning out knishes, latkes, and chopped liver in a corner of California that doesn't see nearly enough of them. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the best restaurants in Sonoma County and called its bagels the best in the Bay Area.

The line outside this Berkeley bagel shop has been there since day one and shows no sign of leaving. Boichik turns out chubby, chewy, malty New York-style bagels, kosher and done traditionally: salt bagels heavy with big sea-salt flakes, pumpernickel baked nearly chocolate-dark. The San Francisco Chronicle named them the Bay Area's best. Cream cheese runs from plain whipped to Hatch chile, and the house-made whitefish salad sandwich makes a strong case for staying.

A bagel shop that graduated from popup to a proper Albany storefront, Hella Bagels turns out rounds with the kind of chew that makes you feel like your jaw is doing something worthwhile. The patio, ringed in beige and rust tones that happen to match the bagels, is a nice place to work through a sandwich. The San Francisco Chronicle named them the Bay Area's best.

The bagels here start as whole wheat grain, stone-milled on-site before the dough even exists. This Petaluma bagel shop runs a 36-hour process using sourdough starter, so the finished product lands somewhere between New York tradition and Northern California obsession. Toppings skew local and organic, and the menu stretches from classic to pesto and pizza. The San Francisco Chronicle named it the Bay Area's best.

Loaves lined up on shelves like a carb library, pastries under glass, and a window straight into the breadmaking operation: Backhaus is a downtown San Mateo bakery and coffee shop that takes laminated dough seriously. The croissants lean toward the ornate, one arrives garnished with pistachios and raspberry as a preview of what's inside. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best bakeries and best coffee.

Cardamom buns, jumbo jam thumbprints, and gingery caramel cookies set the tone at this Scandinavian café and bakery on Market Street. The menu leans seasonal, with tartines on sprouted rye and both sweet and savory porridges, but the flaky seed-topped pastry stuffed with soft scrambled eggs and molten havarti is what brings people back. Grab a sidewalk table and let the Market Street parade do its thing.

A glass case of choux, pâté en croûte, and individual rounds of quiche greets you the moment you walk into this French patisserie and café in the Financial District. The quiche, filled with custard, bacon, and comté, comes as its own small pie rather than a slice, which feels either very Parisian or very practical depending on your mood. The canelés have a genuinely crackling shell that most local versions never manage.

This is a small bakery-cafe on Woodward where Filipino pastries, ube cookies, and pandesal stuffed with coconut or cream cheese share a counter with longganisa biscuits and gravy. Doughnuts show up on a schedule, so Saturday bomboloni with a rotating monthly filling are a loose appointment you have to keep. About ten seats, a few espresso drinks, and a calamansi soda that makes your usual lemonade feel underdressed. Eater has named it among Detroit's best coffee shops and doughnut shops.

The pastry case at this sunny Healdsburg bakery often runs bare before the end of the day, which should tell you something. Pesto-swirled croissants and kouign amanns sit alongside serious breads, and the quiche lands on the creamier end of the spectrum. Seating is outdoor picnic tables only, so you're essentially buying provisions. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top bakeries in the Bay Area.

Yellow Light is a neighborhood doughnut and coffee shop on Jefferson Avenue in Jefferson Chalmers, with a drive-thru that does real work once winter sets in. The glazes get inventive, including one made with Faygo Red Pop, and the biscuit breakfast sandwiches keep the savory side honest. It's cheap, casual, and eaten in a parked car about as often as at a table. Eater has put it on both its Detroit doughnut and coffee lists.

This is the Morningside flagship of a longtime Atlanta bakery, where four separate counters operate behind glass doors in a state of organized chaos. One handles bread and sweet, sticky cinnamon twists, another does delicate desserts like opera cakes and macarons, and the prepared foods case is where you go to look like you cooked for the dinner party. The Infatuation has it on its list of the city's best bakeries. Order a sandwich first, so you shop with a clear head.

The kouign amanns at this French patisserie on California Street are craggy, almost weightless things that have earned a loyal queue out the door. Inside, the counter runs in precise rows: small rectangular cakes, custard cups, bostocks, croissants. The pace is brisk, so know your order before you reach the front. A few tables inside, a parklet out, or the sister café nearby for when you want to sit down properly.

Baked On 8th is a neighborhood bakery and cafe whose pastry case runs most of the length of the building, which is the kind of floor plan that tells you what the priorities are. The millionaire shortbread is the one people bring up, with a cookie-dough-ish base under thick caramel. Custom cakes are the specialty, but a single slice covers the more modest occasion of having survived a Tuesday. Prices stay friendly, and no one dresses up.

Vegan croissants that make you forget to ask whether they're vegan: that's the opening argument at this pastry shop in East LA, run by a chef whose work with nondairy butter has quietly shifted what the format can do. The Danishes lean on fruit from the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, and the annual pithivier has developed its own following. The New York Times named it among the top bakeries in the country.

A baklava shop so focused it sells exactly two things: walnut and pistachio, by the tray, full stop. The phyllo is made in-house, which almost no one bothers to do, and you'll know it the moment your teeth go through it. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best bakeries. Bring cash, pick pistachio, and try not to eat half the tray on the walk back to your car.

The six bakers here clock in at 3:30 a.m. to supply Le Diplomate's bread program, and the public gets to buy the same loaves from a 100-square-foot alley shop tucked into the Union Market district. It's a tiny bakery with a serious output: baguettes, multigrain levain, cranberry walnut boules, viennoiserie, and a rotating cast of specialty breads, plus local jams and honey to take home with them.

Brightside Bakeshop is a pastry counter where the menu rotates monthly, so your favorite croissant is always on a countdown. Flavors tend toward the inventive, like lemon lavender kouign amann or an oatmeal cream pie croissant, and there's a sunny wall in the Nations spot that's clearly there for the photos. Expect coffee-and-pastry prices and a line of people deciding between the danish and the other danish.

The name undersells it: Butchertown Grocery Bakery is a breakfast and lunch spot where the pastry case gets equal billing with the sandwich menu. The wagyu pastrami sandwich with hot mustard and a runny egg has the kind of following that fills tables before noon. Weekend mornings bring out the rolled croissants in rotating flavors, the kind of thing people plan their Saturdays around without quite admitting it.

Pandan Basque cheesecakes in a San Jose strip mall, which is a sentence that doesn't get old. CA Bakehouse is a takeout-only bakery working Southeast Asian flavors into croissants, milk breads, egg tarts, and whole cheesecakes you have to preorder. The banh bo, a soft honeycomb cake, sits alongside coconut-stuffed pandan milk bread that has no business being this good for the price. The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the Bay Area's best bakeries.

Colette is a Poncey-Highland bakery where the order counter sits right in front of the open kitchen, so you can watch the bakers knead dough while you wait behind a weekend line of stroller-pushing locals. The case runs from brioche tarts to sour cream-iced cinnamon rolls the size of a toddler's head, plus savory scones made with shishito peppers. It's a counter-service pastry stop, so wear whatever you rolled out of bed in.

The cupcakes here are moist enough to make you question every dry, forgettable one you've settled for before. A cupcake shop with locations across the Bay Area, Cupcakin' leans into citrus flavors, key lime and lemon cream pie among them, with tangy curd and a crumbled graham cracker base. Minis are available for the non-committal. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's top bakeries.

Fad Classic Bakery sits in Smyrna beside a loud blue building that does its best to upstage it. The bakery is a quiet counter-service spot, cheap and unfussy, with cinnamon rolls that stay soft without going gummy under a generous slab of cream cheese icing. Weekends bring Nutella, Oreo, and strawberry versions, which also means they sell out early, so the alarm clock is part of the plan. The Infatuation lists it among Atlanta's best bakeries.

Cardamom rolls with maple icing at a bakery in a town of 7,000, seventy miles from Minneapolis, is either a bold bet or a very convincing argument for small-town life. The chef behind the pastry case came up in big-city kitchens, and the breads and laminated doughs show it. Monday nights pivot to pizza, which gives regulars a reason to come back before the week gets away from them. The New York Times named it among the best bakeries in the country.

Flour Your Dreams is a small bakery and cafe out in Hermitage, the sort of place where bread making came first and everything else followed. The sourdough boules come sliced and ready for dinner, with local honey or butter on the shelf to go with them. There are only a few tables, but one usually opens up for a laptop and a chai, which makes it a decent excuse to skip the drive downtown.

Galette is a pocket-size bakery in Avondale Estates that keeps Thursday-through-Sunday hours, which sounds like a hobby until you see the weekend line. Saturday and Sunday bring the oversized cinnamon rolls under a generous slick of icing, plus breakfast sandwiches on croissants, and the rolls vanish early. Weekdays are calmer, with apple cider donuts, pistachio croissants, and an apple galette that earns the name.

Gluten Free Goose is a dedicated gluten-free bakery in Lenox Village that opens just three days a week for six hours a day, so the Thursday-morning line comes with the territory. The case runs to cupcakes with tall dollops of frosting, oatmeal cream pies sized for a fist, and a brown sugar pop tart with ambitions. There's one lonely table inside, so most people eat in the car.

This Inman Park bakeshop is entirely gluten-free and enthusiastic enough about it to put the exclamation point right in the name. The case runs from Funfetti donuts to blueberry cheesecake pop tarts, plus savory empanadas that take well to a dab of hot sauce. It's a grab-and-go counter with nowhere to sit, so plan on eating in the car or on a nearby curb. The Infatuation lists it among Atlanta's best bakeries.

This is an old-school bakery and deli where the display cases do most of the talking, stocked with muffins, rugelach, shortbread, and gingerbread men that apparently never go out of season. It's also a sandwich counter, so a juicy french dip is on the table, with plenty of seating so the au jus stays out of your car. The petit fours, topped with tiny icing leaves, are the sort of thing you mean to share. The Infatuation lists it among the best bakeries in Atlanta.

A pink-and-purple French bakery in Potrero Hill where the canelés arrive with a deeply caramelized crust and a custardy, rum-scented interior. The menu rotates around French technique with a tropical detour: passion fruit, calamansi, coconut lavender. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best bakeries, which feels obvious the moment the smell of vanilla and rum reaches you at the door.

A Southern bakery with a drive-through window, which in Hattiesburg feels less like a convenience and more like a statement of values. The team here turns out croissants, bagels, fruit pies, and sausage biscuits that the New York Times called out among its picks for standout U.S. bakeries. The place is the first bakery from Robert St. John, a local figure who has been feeding this corner of Mississippi for decades through restaurants, cookbooks, and TV.

Mama Bread is a neighborhood bakery and cafe with a pastry case that has people lining up around 8am, a full two hours before the loaves come out of the oven. Morning buns, croissant breakfast sandwiches, and flaky things stuffed with squash and ricotta are the reason to be in that line. There's a tiny market inside, so you can leave with jam and a mild sense of having your life together.

A French bakery on West Charleston where the croissants and chausson aux pommes share the case with a full Dubai chocolate section, because the pistachio-and-kataifi craze has to land somewhere. Pain au chocolat is the old-guard order, and the team runs savory croissant and quiche specials through the week. It's a pastry-case-and-pay-at-the-counter kind of place, so come as you are and leave with a box.

Milkfish is a Filipino home bakery that mostly turns up as a Saturday pop-up, so checking the website before you drive over is the whole game. The pastry case runs to ube-striped babka, crispy karioka fritters, and a coconut-and-pandan-soaked dulce de leche cake, all of it Filipino bakeshop tradition with a few modern ideas smuggled in. It has James Beard Foundation recognition, which is a lot for a kitchen that's also somebody's kitchen.

Conchas that are fluffy with just enough density to feel substantial without tipping into sweet are Norte 54's calling card, and they're worth tracking down. This pop-up bakery rotates through Mexican pastries and desserts: buñuelos one week, tres leches cake the next, all rooted in nostalgia and sharpened by pastry technique. Catch it at Mission Mercado, Grand Coffee, or Nopalito, depending on the week.

The doors close at 11 a.m. and the croissants are often gone well before that, which means showing up to this small French patisserie in Albany is a bit like gambling, but with better odds if you arrive early. The plain croissant is the one people reorganize their mornings for, thin-layered and butter-crisp. Canelés, kouign amann, and egg custard tarts fill out the short menu until they don't.

Pepino is a daytime bakeshop and cafe on a La Jolla side street, where sandwiches, salads, and burritos carry quiet Peruvian accents. It serves lunch only, 11 to 3, and closes entirely Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so plan accordingly. The sun-lit patio is the move on a clear day, and inside it's small and warm, with the easy, neighborly feel of a place that knows your order. Eater lists it among San Diego's best lunch spots.

Perenn is a bakery and cafe in the Sidco industrial stretch, in the old Stay Golden space, which now doubles as the central production facility. That means you can eat a pain au chocolat on a mezzanine while watching the people who made it keep making more, a little like dinner theater with laminated dough. The croissants and kouign-amann are flaky enough to leave evidence on your shirt, and the almond croissant wants to be warmed.

A one-baker whole-grain bakery in San Rafael that runs on a newsletter, pre-orders, and the constant threat of selling out before you've finished your coffee. The baker behind it competed at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, which is the bread Olympics, and he won, but the menu here is squarely about whole grains, not trophies. Stock changes weekly, walk-ins get what's left, and the San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best bakeries.

Saint Germain is a French bakery and cafe at the Interlock, with Parisian-style tables roomy enough that you can set up a laptop and stay until closing without a single glare. The display cases hold frilly cakes so decorated you hesitate before the first forkful, briefly. The macaron selection runs past twenty flavors, lavender to pistachio, which is a lot of decisions for someone who only came in for coffee.

French technique meets Japanese flavors at this Cleveland Park bakery, where cruffins come filled with lychee and grapefruit and the matcha shows up in mochi rolls alongside lavender. The pastry case leans into seasonal and Japanese ingredients in a way that feels less like a gimmick and more like a genuine point of view. Weekend mornings draw a line worth joining, even if you tell yourself you're just stopping in for coffee.

The in-house stone mill sets Seylou apart from every other bakery in D.C., whole grains going from kernel to loaf under one roof. The team ferments the dough and bakes in a wood-fired oven imported from abroad, which explains the crust on those pain au levain loaves. Mornings bring whole grain croissants and an espresso bar, and on Wednesday nights the sourdough becomes the base for pizza, which is either a great idea or a threat to your routine.

Sift is a bakery-cafe with a giant stick of butter painted on its exterior, which is the closest thing to a mission statement you'll find on a building. Inside, the case runs to tiramisu brownies, apple crumb tarts, and cherry almond breakfast cakes, with a box of six getting you a sixth free. The coffee and tea come from the Dose people, so the golden chai arrives under soft whipped cream. The maritozzi is how you end up buying a second box.

Southern Sweets is a Decatur bakery where the display cases of tarts, pies, and cookies are basically a decoy for the giant layer cakes in the back, which come in 17 flavors. The old-fashioned chocolate has a slice-sized pound of melted chocolate in it, and the gluten-free and vegan crowd gets real options, including a plant-based strawberry cake that will have you eyeing the whole one on the way out.

Sweet Hut is a Pan-Asian bakery and cafe in Midtown, roomy enough that laptop campers and long-lunch friends coexist without elbowing each other. You'll pass rows of individually wrapped pastries before reaching the register, and the white baskets are a quiet admission that one pastry was never the plan. Matcha red bean, Hong Kong polo buns, and a bulgogi Bibimbap Burger for people who need a real lunch first.

A plant-based Hong Kong-style bakery open just one day a week, Tai Zhan draws on the baking culture of old-style cha chaan tengs to turn out pineapple buns, coconut cream buns, and laminated pastries made with avocado and coconut oils rather than butter. The croissants and kouign amann hold their crackle the way the real thing should. Pre-orders open mid-week; walk-ins are welcome on Saturdays, assuming you arrive before the serious shoppers do.

This is a small neighborhood bakery and coffee shop on Georgia Ave in Summerhill, the quiet one of the three locations. Big windows pour light onto a sitting area of locals and GSU students typing away, and the room is calm enough to make you forget you live in Atlanta. The glass case is hard to resist, but the fruit tarts and savory quiches are the safe moves. Cash-light, low-stakes, and nobody's in a hurry.