The Best Pastries in East London

It's a Saturday morning somewhere around eight o'clock, and Lauriston Road is already humming. A man clutches a paper bag to his chest like it contains something precious — which, if those are what I think they are, it does. Down on Broadway Market, a queue has quietly assembled outside a wood-fronted arch before the shutters have even gone up. In East London, the weekend pastry ritual isn't just a preference; it's practically a civic duty. Few cities anywhere in the world pack this many outstanding artisan bakeries into this concentration of postcodes, and the pastry counter in particular has become the creative heartland of London's entire baking renaissance. Whether you're after meticulously laminated croissants, pillowy Italian cream buns, or something considerably weirder and more wonderful than either — East London has it, and it has it in abundance. Welcome to the neighbourhood that raised the bar for weekend breakfast delivery London-wide.

The Best Pastry Destinations in East London

1. Pophams London Fields

London Fields, E8 3NJ | Rating: 4.6 | Mon–Fri 7:30am–4pm; Sat 8am–4pm; Sun 8:30am–4pm

If there is one bakery that made East London rethink what a croissant could be, it is this one. Founded in Islington in 2017 by Ollie Gold and Lucy McWhirter, the London Fields site brings the same laminated brilliance to E8 — the bacon and maple syrup croissant, the marmite and cheddar twist, the sauerkraut and gruyère creation that sounds like a dare and tastes like a revelation. The Saturday morning queue is not folklore; it is a fact of life on Richmond Road. The Good Food Guide 2025 Top 50 nod is entirely deserved. Get here early, or go home empty-handed.

2. Yeast Bakery

London Fields, E8 4QS | Rating: 4.6 | Wed–Fri 8am–4pm; Sat–Sun 9am–4pm

Here is a bakery that started with a single, obsessive question in 2011: what does a truly perfect croissant look like? More than a decade later, Yeast is still asking — and the answers keep arriving in vivid seasonal flavours from a railway arch beside Regent's Canal on Sheep Lane. Their hand-laminated programme runs from kouign amann and pain au chocolat to ever-changing inventive specials, and the canal-side setting on a cold Sunday morning is frankly idyllic. They also supply a number of top London restaurants, which tells you everything you need to know about the quality. Open Wednesday to Sunday only, which adds a pleasing sense of occasion.

3. Forno

London Fields, E8 4RP | Rating: 4.5 | Mon–Fri 7:30am–4pm; Sat–Sun 8am–5pm

Mitch Ibrahim — the mind behind acclaimed Italian restaurant Ombra — opened this vaulted railway arch bakery and deli in 2022, and East London hasn't quite recovered. Forno's maritozzi are the thing: plush, cream-filled Roman buns that make a convincing argument for moving to the neighbourhood permanently. The custardy veneziana, gianduja chocolate rolls, and rosemary focaccia pizza by the slice are equally irresistible, and the Italian deli counter loaded with cheese, charcuterie, and handmade pasta gives you absolutely no reason to leave. The Infatuation gave it 8.1; the Good Food Guide recommended it. Both are right.

4. e5 Bakehouse

London Fields, E8 3PH | Rating: 4.4 | Mon–Fri 7:30am–5pm; Sat–Sun 8am–5pm

One of London's true originals: founded by Ben Mackinnon with a clay oven in a Hackney railway arch in 2010, e5 has expanded into a three-arch complex beneath London Fields station where staff grind their own flour from UK-grown organic wheat every morning at sunrise — a practice that remains unique among London bakeries. The almond pain au chocolat and cardamom buns are the pastry highlights; the sourdough loaves are the stuff of legend. With baking courses, a vibrant café, and near-religious devotion from the Hackney community, this is a genuine London institution. The Guardian and New York Times have both noticed. So has everyone else.

5. Violet Cakes

Hackney Central, E8 3ED | Rating: 4.6 | Mon–Fri 8am–5pm; Sat–Sun 9am–6pm

American-born, Hackney-adopted Claire Ptak bakes with a seasonal instinct that feels genuinely rare — her cakes respond to the time of year in the way a good cookbook should, not the way a supermarket does. The Wilton Way shopfront is warm and luminous, the baked goods extraordinary: seasonal layered cakes, scones, brownies, and cupcakes made with free-range eggs and ingredients that have actually been thought about. You may have heard that Claire was chosen to create the official wedding cake for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018 — an elderflower and lemon creation that brought the Guardian, Vogue, and the New York Times to this exact E8 terrace. She also runs a stall at Broadway Market on Saturdays, which feels wonderfully appropriate.

6. Breid Bakery

Bethnal Green, E2 6JG | Rating: 4.9 | Mon–Fri 8am–6:30pm; Sat–Sun 9:30am–6:30pm

The name comes from the Scottish word for bread, and the ambition behind it matches the etymology. Opened in a Bethnal Green railway arch at the corner of Vallance Road and Dunbridge Street, Breid is a wholesale bakery that also opens its doors to anyone wise enough to find it — and the patisserie programme alongside those wild yeast sourdough loaves is exceptional. A 4.9 Google rating from a growing band of devoted regulars places it comfortably among East London's highest-rated independents, and it has already drawn comparisons with some of the city's finest artisan bakeries. Arrive with an open mind and leave with significantly more than you planned to buy.

7. Greedy Cow Bakes

Bethnal Green, E2 8PP | Rating: 4.6 | Fri–Sun 11am–8pm

Nazia Yasmin opened on Hackney Road in December 2023 and the queue immediately stretched 100 metres to the bus stop. The reason was Korean milk doughnuts — pillowy brioche-style creations filled with luscious cream that had the whole of East London talking before the paint had dried. A rotating programme of seasonal sweet bakes and inventive pastries accompanies them, and the Thursday-to-Sunday opening creates exactly the weekend pilgrimage energy you'd expect. Just a stroll from Cambridge Heath Overground and minutes from Columbia Road Flower Market, it fits perfectly into the weekend ritual that defines this part of the city. Time Out and the whole of social media have already weighed in enthusiastically.

8. Lily Vanilli Bakery

Bethnal Green, E2 7RH | Rating: 4.4 | Sat 10am–5pm; Sun 9am–4:30pm

Tucked into a cobbled courtyard off Ezra Street — steps from the Columbia Road Flower Market, which is already one of the most enchanting postcodes in London — Lily Jones' bakery opens only at weekends and has been doing so since 2010 with considerable A-list and fashion-world fanfare. The weekly-changing display of spectacular seasonal cakes and pastries is genuinely theatrical, the famous sausage rolls are exceptional, and vegan and gluten-free options are always available on Sundays. The setting does half the work before you've even tasted anything; the baking does the rest. If you're in E2 on a weekend morning and you don't visit, you will feel the loss.

9. Rinkoff Bakery

Whitechapel, E1 3BS | Rating: 4.4 | Mon–Fri 7am–5pm; Sat–Sun 8am–3pm

Hyman Rinkoff arrived from Ukraine and opened a bakery in the East End in 1911. More than a century later, the fourth generation of the Rinkoff family is still at it, which tells you something profound about both the bread and the family. Their Jubilee Street flagship is where the Crodough lives — a croissant-doughnut hybrid in pistachio, salted caramel, Biscoff, and lemon that has drawn queues from across the city since the family invented it. But the challahs, babkas, slab cakes, and the broader Jewish baking heritage that underpins everything here deserve equal attention. The Guardian, the Financial Times, and Time Out have all made the pilgrimage. It remains one of the most important bakeries in East London by any measure.

10. The Dusty Knuckle

Dalston, E8 3DP | Rating: 4.6 | Mon–Sun 8am–3:30pm

Founded in 2014 in a car park shipping container in Dalston by Daisy Terry, Rebecca Oliver, and Max Tobias, The Dusty Knuckle is a social enterprise with an explicit mission: to train and employ vulnerable young people while simultaneously making some of the finest bread in the country. The two things coexist beautifully. The fabled potato sourdough loaves are the anchor, but the croissants, pastries, and oversized sandwiches made with organic ingredients all reach the same extraordinary standard. Baker's Dozen 2024 placed them third in the UK. A 4.6 rating from nearly 1,500 Google reviewers. Featured in the Guardian, the Telegraph, and Time Out. This is, by any standard, one of London's finest artisan bakeries.

What If Getting There Isn't an Option?

There is, of course, a certain magic to walking into a Hackney railway arch at half past eight on a Saturday morning and emerging with something warm in a paper bag. But life — small children, long distances, an absolute refusal to leave the flat before nine — doesn't always cooperate. It's no surprise, then, that the demand for serious artisan bread subscription and pastry delivery across London has grown so markedly over the past few years. People who'd happily queue outside a canal-side bakery on a sunny morning increasingly want that same quality at home, without the commute. The shift toward artisan sourdough London delivery, pastry subscription UK services, and sustainable food delivery London models has moved well beyond a pandemic habit; it's become a permanent preference for anyone who has discovered that the gap between a supermarket croissant and a properly laminated one is, frankly, enormous.

What's driven the most interesting part of this movement is the commitment to doing it properly. Zero waste bakery London models — baking strictly to order rather than overproducing and discarding — have demonstrated that quality and sustainability aren't in tension; they're the same thing. Bike delivery food London services have reduced the environmental cost of getting good bread to your door, and a proper weekend breakfast delivery London subscription, timed to arrive while you're still in your dressing gown, has become one of those small domestic luxuries that turns out to be genuinely transformative. Weekend mornings are short. The right pastry makes them longer.

Bring East London's Best Pastries to Your Door with Butter & Crust

If the bakeries above have convinced you that East London has raised the bar permanently — but you can't always get to them — then Butter & Crust exists precisely for mornings like that. Working in partnership with the best local artisan producers in London, Butter & Crust delivers freshly baked sourdough, pastries, and breakfast goods directly to your door by 9am every weekend, so the best of what the city's bakers make is waiting for you before you've had to make any decisions more taxing than what to put on your bread.

Deliveries in inner London are made by bicycle, which keeps things clean, local, and quietly right. All packaging is recyclable. Everything is baked to order — meaning nothing sits around waiting to be purchased, nothing goes to waste, and what arrives at your door is genuinely fresh rather than optimistically labelled that way. The subscription is completely flexible: pause it, skip a week, cancel without drama. Butter & Crust currently covers most of London zones 1–3 and is expanding, so if you're not in the catchment area yet, you may well be soon. For anyone who loves what East London's artisan bakeries are doing but can't always make it there on a Saturday morning, this is a very good reason to stay in bed a little longer.

Find out more and start your subscription at butterandcrust.com

Sources

• Pophams London Fields — London Fields, E8 3NJ | pophamsbakery.com
• Yeast Bakery — London Fields, E8 4QS | yeastbakery.com
• Forno — London Fields, E8 4RP | forno.london
• e5 Bakehouse — London Fields, E8 3PH | e5bakehouse.com
• Violet Cakes — Hackney Central, E8 3ED | violetcakes.com
• Breid Bakery — Bethnal Green, E2 6JG | breidbakers.co.uk
• Greedy Cow Bakes — Bethnal Green, E2 8PP | greedy-cow-bakes.menueat.net
• Lily Vanilli Bakery — Bethnal Green, E2 7RH | lilyvanilli.com
• Rinkoff Bakery — Whitechapel, E1 3BS | rinkoffs.co.uk
• The Dusty Knuckle — Dalston, E8 3DP | thedustyknuckle.com

Editorial sources: Good Food Guide 2025; Baker's Dozen 2024 (British Baker); Time Out London; The Infatuation London; Hot Dinners; Guardian Food.