The Best Pastries in Holloway

The Best Pastries in Holloway

The Best Pastries in Holloway — and the Brilliant Bakeries Just Beyond

Introduction

Saturday morning in Holloway has a particular kind of magic. There's a moment — just after nine, when the weekend finally exhales — when you find yourself on Hornsey Road or Georges Road with a brown paper bag going translucent at the bottom from a warm almond bear claw, and everything feels briefly, wonderfully right. This corner of North London has quietly become one of the most exciting places in the city for serious pastry, with a cluster of independent bakeries doing genuinely extraordinary work within easy walking or cycling distance of each other. Whether you're after hand-laminated croissants, cardamom buns that smell like a Scandinavian dream, or a babka so good it makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about enriched dough, Holloway and its immediate neighbours have you covered. Weekend breakfast delivery London might be your backup plan, but first — let's go exploring.

The Best Pastries in Holloway and the Surrounding Area

1. Holloway Model Bakery

Holloway, N7 8HX | Rating: 4.6 | Open daily, 9:00am–3:00pm

If you only make one stop in Holloway, make it this one. Opened in August 2022 by Michelle Eshkeri — the baker behind the much-loved Margot Bakery in East Finchley — this cheerful, community-rooted café and bakery on Georges Road is the real deal. The rotating counter is a minor masterpiece: think apple custard danishes that shatter at the edges, cinnamon buns that pull apart in warm ribbons, almond bear claws that are nutty and fragrant and gone before you reach the door. The babka is worth a special mention — rich, swirled, and deeply satisfying in a way that other bakeries spend years chasing. Reviewed by the Good Food Guide and adored by the neighbourhood in equal measure.

Visit Holloway Model Bakery

2. Bread By Bike

Tufnell Park, N7 0DD | Rating: 4.6 | Open daily, 8:00am–4:00pm

Founded by Andy Strang — a former physicist who started baking during his PhD and crowdfunded his way into a proper bakery — Bread By Bike is one of North London's most principled and quietly impressive operations. The sourdough loaves are open-crumbed and deeply flavoured, the focaccia is superb, and the artisan pastries are made with the same obsessive care that runs through everything here. What makes it distinctive, beyond the quality of the bake itself, is the commitment: zero-emission delivery by cargo bicycle across North London, a genuine social enterprise ethos, and a bakery that walks its talk at every turn. Featured in Time Out and Hot Dinners, and the sort of place that makes you feel good about where your money goes.

Visit Bread By Bike

3. Jolene Big Jo

Holloway, N7 7HE | Rating: 4.5 | Mon 8:00am–3:00pm; Tue–Sun 8:00am–4:00pm

Big Jo is the spacious, high-ceilinged sibling of the celebrated Jolene in Newington Green, and it brings the same rigorous, provenance-obsessed approach to its Hornsey Road home. What sets Jolene apart from almost every other bakery in London is the flour: they mill their own from ancient, non-hybridised grain varieties grown using horse-drawn machinery, and you can taste the difference in every laminated pastry and sourdough loaf. The croissants carry a nuttiness and depth you won't find elsewhere. Add a full all-day dining menu, Michelin recognition at brand level, and a recommendation from Eater London, and it's clear Big Jo has earned its place on this list.

Visit Jolene Big Jo

4. Boulangerie Bon Matin

Finsbury Park, N4 3AJ | Rating: 4.3 | Mon–Fri 7:00am–4:30pm; Sat–Sun 7:00am–5:30pm

There is something quietly magnificent about a French bakery that has been owned by the same husband-and-wife team since 2010 and shows absolutely no sign of losing its edge. Boulangerie Bon Matin — tucked into Tollington Park with bare brick walls and a conservatory-topped dining room that feels like it belongs in Paris rather than Finsbury Park — is one of North London's most reliably wonderful places to start a morning. The viennoiseries are made fresh daily: croissants that yield properly, pain au chocolat with a good, dark filling, sourdough baguettes with a crust that crackles the way it should. Featured in Time Out and Hot Dinners, and loyal to its neighbourhood for over fifteen years.

Visit Boulangerie Bon Matin

5. Dunn's Bakery

Crouch End, N8 9SN | Rating: 4.4 | Tue–Fri 7:00am–6:00pm; Sat 6:00am–6:00pm; Sun 7:00am–5:00pm

Some bakeries trade on their history. Dunn's has earned the right to: the family has been baking continuously on Crouch End Broadway since 1820, and sixth-generation baker Lewis Freeman keeps the standard genuinely high. This isn't a museum piece — the jam doughnuts are soft and generously filled, the babka is excellent, the sourdoughs are properly made, and the sausage rolls are the kind that make you eat them on the pavement before you've even got home. Add a celebrated celebration cake programme to the mix, and you have a bakery that somehow manages to be both a piece of living heritage and one of the most satisfying places to shop in North London.

Visit Dunn's Bakery

6. Sourdough Sophia — Crouch End

Crouch End, N8 8PL | Rating: 4.7 | Daily 8:40am–4:30pm

Sophia Sutton Jones started baking in her dining room during lockdown in 2020 and has since expanded to four North and Northwest London locations — which tells you everything you need to know about the quality of what comes out of her ovens. The Middle Lane flagship is the original, and it remains exceptional: hand-laminated croissants with proper honeycomb layers, iced cinnamon buns with a sticky, caramelised pull, matcha chocolate slices that are restrained and rich all at once, and spinach and feta swirls that make an almost unfairly good lunch. Award-winning, featured in Retail Bulletin, and championed by British Baker as one of the country's finest small artisan bakeries.

Visit Sourdough Sophia

7. Tarn Bakery

Archway, N19 3NB | Rating: 4.8 | Tue 8:30am–2:00pm; Wed–Fri 8:00am–3:00pm; Sat 9:00am–3:00pm

Opened in December 2023 by Florin Grama (ex-Pophams, Flor, St Barts) and Felix Ortona Coles, Tarn is the most exciting small-batch bakery to open in this part of North London in years, and the 4.8 rating tells its own story. Operating from a tiny shopfront on the Archway/Highgate border just four or five days a week, every detail here is considered: wheat from Bruern Farms and Gilchesters, dairy from The Estate Dairy, chocolate from Pump Street. The almond croissants are extraordinary — buttery, frangipane-filled, perfectly caramelised — and the cardamom buns carry a warmth that lingers well into the afternoon. Reviewed by the Good Food Guide and featured in Hot Dinners. Worth every step of the walk.

Visit Tarn Bakery

8. La Fromagerie — Highbury

Highbury, N5 2AA | Rating: 4.5 | Mon–Wed 9:00am–6:00pm; Thu–Fri 9:00am–7:00pm; Sat 9:00am–6:00pm; Sun 9:30am–4:00pm

Patricia Michelson's La Fromagerie is one of those food institutions that London would be genuinely diminished without, and the Highbury Park outpost is a destination in its own right. The bakery counter produces sourdough loaves, focaccia, seasonal tarts, and artisan pastries of real quality — designed to complement the legendary cheese counter and charcuterie that make this place one of the finest all-round food destinations in the north of the city. It's the kind of shop where you arrive for a pastry and leave an hour later with a wedge of aged comté and a jar of something unexpected, wondering how you'll carry it all home. Featured in virtually every major London and international food guide, and entirely deserving of every word.

Visit La Fromagerie Highbury

What If Getting There Isn't an Option?

The bakeries above are genuinely worth a Saturday morning expedition — but let's be honest about the reality of London life. Sometimes the Northern line is doing something inexplicable, the kids are still in pyjamas at half nine, or you've simply decided that the sofa is non-negotiable. The demand for quality pastry at home has grown enormously over the past few years, and it hasn't been met by supermarkets or overnight couriers flinging croissants from industrial estates. What's grown instead is something much more interesting: a wave of artisan breakfast delivery London services, bread subscription London models, and pastry subscription UK operations that have taken the ethos of the best independent bakeries and applied it to the morning post.

What drives the best of these is a combination of factors that would have felt utopian a decade ago: sustainable food delivery London businesses using cargo bikes rather than vans, zero waste bakery London models that bake to order rather than guess at demand, and flexible subscription structures that treat customers like adults. The result is sourdough and laminated pastries arriving at your door on a weekend morning, still warm, with no surplus, no packaging mountain, and no food thrown away. It's a genuinely different model — and for those of us who care both about what we eat and the impact of how we get it, it matters.

Butter & Crust: Brilliant Bakery, Delivered to Your Door

If all of the above sounds like exactly what your weekend mornings need, then Butter & Crust is worth knowing about. Built on partnerships with the finest artisan producers in London, Butter & Crust delivers sourdough loaves, proper pastries, and breakfast goods by 9am every weekend — so that the first thing you do on a Saturday or Sunday morning can be as good as anything you'd find in the bakeries above, without leaving the house.

In inner London, delivery is by bicycle — no vans, no emissions, just a person on a bike and a bag of excellent things. Everything is packed in fully recyclable materials, and crucially, everything is baked to order. There is no surplus, no guesswork, no food going to waste at the end of the day. It's the zero waste bakery London model done properly, and it means that what arrives at your door is as fresh as it is possible to be.

The subscription is genuinely flexible — pause it when you're away, skip a week when the fridge is already full, cancel if life changes. No penalties, no fuss. Butter & Crust currently covers most of London zones 1 to 3, with more areas coming on board regularly. If you've ever wanted the artisan sourdough London experience without the queue, or a pastry subscription UK that genuinely delivers on its promise — this is the one.

Your weekend mornings deserve better than average. Butter & Crust is a very good place to start.

Sources

Editorial sources:

  • Good Food Guide — Holloway Model Bakery; Tarn Bakery
  • Time Out London — Bread By Bike; Boulangerie Bon Matin
  • Hot Dinners — Bread By Bike; Boulangerie Bon Matin; Tarn Bakery
  • Eater London — Jolene Big Jo
  • Retail Bulletin — Sourdough Sophia (December 2025)
  • British Baker — Sourdough Sophia
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