The best baked goods to try in Highbury

The best baked goods to try in Highbury

The Best Baked Goods to Try in Highbury

There is a particular kind of Saturday morning pleasure that Highbury residents know well — the one where you pull on a jacket, step out into the cool N5 air, and follow your nose somewhere rewarding. The smell of sourdough crust, of butter meeting a hot oven, of coffee doing its morning work. It is a pleasure that has quietly become one of North London's great secrets: the neighbourhood sits at the centre of a genuinely extraordinary cluster of artisan bakeries, each one doing something a little different, each one worth the walk. Whether you are after a weekend breakfast delivery in London or simply planning a proper local bakery crawl, this stretch of North London is your starting point.

The Best Bakeries Near Highbury Worth Visiting Right Now

1. La Fromagerie Highbury

Highbury Park, N5 2AA · Rating: 4.5 · Mon–Wed & Sat: 9am–6pm | Thu–Fri: 9am–7pm | Sun: 9:30am–4pm

Patricia Michelson's legendary Highbury outpost is one of those food destinations that makes you feel immediately lucky to live in London. The bakery programme — sourdough loaves with proper crust, pillowy focaccia, seasonal tarts, and artisan pastries — is built to complement the shop's world-class cheese counter and charcuterie, but it stands magnificently on its own terms. Buy a sourdough, add a wedge of something wonderful from the cheese room, and call it a very good morning indeed.

Visit La Fromagerie

2. Sourdough Sophia Islington

117–119 Essex Road, Islington, N1 2SN · Rating: 4.7 · Mon–Sat: 8am–4:30pm | Sun: 9am–4:30pm

Sophia Sutton Jones launched her micro-bakery from her dining room table during the first lockdown in 2020 — a detail that makes what she has built feel all the more remarkable. This Essex Road site is one of four North London locations, and the full programme is here in force: slow-fermented sourdough loaves with serious depth, hand-laminated croissants, matcha chocolate slices, and spinach and feta swirls that will become a personal obsession faster than you think. The sandwiches at lunch are brilliant, too.

Visit Sourdough Sophia

3. Jolene, Newington Green

21 Newington Green, N16 9PU · Rating: 4.7 · Mon: 8am–3pm | Tue–Sun: 8am–4pm (lunch and dinner Tue–Sun from noon/5:30pm)

Jolene is one of those bakeries that makes other bakeries quietly nervous. The flour is milled on site using ancient grain varieties grown with horse-drawn machinery and zero pesticides — and you can taste exactly that level of intention in every loaf. The daily-changing counter moves from exceptional laminated pastries and sausage rolls in the morning to a candlelit, Michelin Guide-listed restaurant come evening. The Good Food Guide loves it. The Infatuation loves it. Once you have had the sourdough, you will love it too.

Visit Jolene

4. The French Market

16 Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park, N4 2DW · Rating: 4.5 · Mon–Thu: 8am–1:30pm | Fri–Sat: 8am–4pm | Sun: 9am–4pm

Opened in September 2023 by three French friends with a shared passion and a clear vision, The French Market is the kind of neighbourhood bakery that feels like it has always been there. Head baker Ludovic Fritz produces sourdough, croissants of exceptional butteriness, Kouign Amann, and a flan pâtissier that is the real, proper, wobbly thing. Their baguette won third prize in a London-wide competition and their croissant reached the finals of the Isigny Ste Mère UK contest — which tells you everything about the seriousness of intent behind the flour-dusted counter. Find the hidden courtyard garden and stay a while.

Visit The French Market

5. Pophams Bakery

19 Prebend Street, Islington, N1 8PF · Rating: 4.7 · Mon–Fri: 7:30am–4pm | Sat: 8am–4pm | Sun: 8:30am–4pm

If you have not yet had Pophams' bacon and maple syrup croissant, that is something to remedy immediately. Ollie Gold and Lucy McWhirter opened this quietly revolutionary bakery on a quiet Islington side street in April 2017 and promptly changed the way London talked about viennoiserie. The marmite and cheddar twists, the sauerkraut and gruyère creations — these are laminated pastries operating at a genuinely different level. Named in the Good Food Guide 2025 Top 50 and the Baker's Dozen 2024 top ten, Pophams has earned every superlative thrown at it. Come early. It sells out.

Visit Pophams

6. Quince Bakery

267 New North Road, Islington, N1 7AA · Rating: 4.8 · Wed–Fri: 8am–2:30pm | Sat: 9am–2:30pm

Anna Higham spent years as one of Britain's most decorated pastry chefs — earning her stripes at The Ledbury (two Michelin stars) and Flor before opening this beautiful, small-batch bakery in 2024. Using exclusively UK-grown, stoneground flour, she produces a rotating seasonal programme that might include wholegrain hand-pies bursting with seasonal fruit, sourdough country loaves and baguettes, wholegrain palmiers, soda breads, and butteries. The wood-fronted shop also stocks cheeses, wines, and pantry goods. Open only four days a week, which means things move quickly — and everything here is worth moving quickly for.

Visit Quince Bakery

What If Getting There Isn't an Option?

There is a version of Saturday morning that does not involve battling for the last croissant before 9am, or timing your journey around a bakery that is only open four days a week and sells out before noon. That version has become increasingly appealing — and increasingly possible. The demand for genuinely artisan bread subscription services in London has grown enormously in recent years, driven by people who know exactly what good bread tastes like and would quite like it to arrive at their door without the queue. The rise of pastry subscription services across the UK reflects the same shift: not a compromise, but a considered upgrade to the morning routine.

What has changed the conversation further is the model behind the best providers — the move away from bulk baking and towards baked-to-order production that generates zero food waste, delivered by bicycle through inner London in genuinely sustainable, recyclable packaging. Weekend breakfast delivery in London has matured from a novelty into something principled. The best operators in this space are working with the same artisan producers you would find in the bakeries above, and bringing that quality directly to your kitchen table.

How Butter & Crust Brings All of This to Your Door

If the bakeries above have convinced you that North London is doing something exceptional with flour, butter, and slow fermentation — but your Saturday mornings do not always allow for a bakery crawl — then Butter & Crust is genuinely worth knowing about.

Butter & Crust partners with the best local artisan producers in London to deliver sourdough, pastries, and breakfast goods directly to your door by 9am every weekend. In inner London, everything arrives by bicycle, and all packaging is fully recyclable — making it one of the more credible options if you are looking for a zero waste bakery London model that actually delivers on its promises, not just its branding. Every item is baked to order, which means nothing sits in a warehouse overnight and there is no food waste built into the process.

The subscription is refreshingly flexible — pause it, skip a week, or cancel whenever you like with no friction. Butter & Crust currently covers most of London zones 1–3, with coverage continuing to expand. If you have been searching for a proper artisan sourdough London subscription or a reliable breakfast delivery London service that takes quality as seriously as the bakeries you already love, this is exactly that.

Your Saturday morning does not have to choose between staying in bed and having excellent bread. Now it can have both.

Sources

Editorial references cited in data: Good Food Guide (2025); Time Out London; Hot Dinners; The Infatuation; Baker's Dozen (2024); Eater London; Michelin Guide; Islington Gazette; London On The Inside.
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