The Top Bakeries in Holloway

The Top Bakeries in Holloway

The Top Bakeries in Holloway

Introduction

There is a particular kind of Saturday morning magic that happens on the streets around Holloway Road. The Piccadilly line disgorges its bleary-eyed passengers, the market stalls are clattering into life, and somewhere — not far away at all — someone is pulling a tray of cinnamon buns from an oven. The smell reaches you before the bakery does. If you have ever followed your nose down a side street in N7 and found yourself face-to-face with a counter full of laminated pastries and hand-scored sourdough, you will know exactly what we mean.

North London has quietly become one of the most interesting neighbourhoods in the city for serious bread and pastry — a genuine community of bakers who care about provenance, process, and the people they feed. Whether you are after a flaky almond croissant, a deeply flavoured open-crumbed sourdough, or a babka worth crossing town for, this corner of London has it in abundance. And for those of us who value a weekend breakfast delivery London can actually be proud of, the options are getting better by the year. Here is our edit of the very best.

The Top Bakeries in and Around Holloway

1. Holloway Model Bakery

Holloway, N7 8HX | Rating: 4.6 / 5 | Open daily 9:00am–3:00pm

This is the one locals talk about with a particular warmth that goes beyond mere pastry loyalty. Opened in August 2022 by Michelle Eshkeri — the founder of the beloved Margot Bakery in East Finchley and a name well known to anyone who follows the Good Food Guide — Holloway Model Bakery has embedded itself in the heart of N7 with remarkable speed. The rotating menu is the kind that rewards regular visits: sourdough loaves, babka, almond bear claws, apple custard danishes, Victoria plum slices, brioche iced buns, croissants, and pain au chocolat, all turning over with the seasons. It is a proper community bakery in the truest sense — not a concept, but a place where people actually belong.

hollowaymodelbakery.square.site

2. Bread By Bike

Tufnell Park, N7 0DD | Rating: 4.6 / 5 | Open daily 8:00am–4:00pm

Few bakeries in London have a founding story quite like this one. Andy Strang was a physicist — mid-PhD, as it happens — when he discovered sourdough, and the rest, as they say, is a very delicious tangent. After crowdfunding the bakery into existence, he opened Bread By Bike in Tufnell Park and has since built one of the most principled and award-winning operations in North London. The naturally leavened sourdough loaves are exceptional — open-crumbed, deeply flavoured, made with premium flour and enormous patience — and the focaccia and artisan pastries are equally serious. What really sets the bakery apart, though, is its zero-emission delivery model: much of the bread goes out by cargo bicycle, making it a genuine standard-bearer for sustainable food delivery in London. Featured in Time Out and Hot Dinners, and thoroughly deserving of both.

breadbybike.com

3. Jolene Big Jo

Holloway, N7 7HE | Rating: 4.5 / 5 | Mon 8:00am–3:00pm; Tue–Sun 8:00am–4:00pm (lunch and dinner from 12:00)

If the original Jolene in Newington Green is the jewel in the crown, Big Jo is the slightly more sprawling, equally brilliant sibling — a large, airy bakery and all-day restaurant on Hornsey Road that carries the same provenance obsession into everything it does. Jolene mills its own flour from ancient, non-hybridised grain varieties grown with horse-drawn machinery — a detail that sounds romantic until you taste the bread, at which point it simply makes sense. The laminated pastries are among the best in North London, and the full dining menu means you can linger in a way that most bakeries do not allow. Michelin-recognised at group level, Eater London-recommended, and thoroughly worth an extended visit.

jolenebakery.com

4. Boulangerie Bon Matin

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

Fifteen years in the same hands, in the same neighbourhood, turning out the same carefully made viennoiseries every morning — there is a lot to be said for that kind of quiet, enduring commitment. Boulangerie Bon Matin has been run by the same husband-and-wife team since 2010, and the Tollington Park shopfront — bare brick walls, a conservatory-roofed dining room, an atmosphere that feels genuinely Parisian without trying too hard — is one of North London's most characterful spots for a proper morning. Croissants, pain au chocolat, sourdough baguettes, cakes, and pastries, all made fresh daily. Featured in both Time Out and Hot Dinners, and with a neighbourhood following that speaks for itself.

boulangeriebonmatin.co.uk

5. Dunn's Bakery

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

Two hundred years. Six generations. One family, baking continuously since 1820 on Crouch End Broadway. Dunn's Bakery is not simply a good bakery — it is a living piece of London food history, and the fact that it remains this good under sixth-generation baker Lewis Freeman makes it all the more extraordinary. The sourdoughs are excellent, the babka is properly done, and the jam doughnuts are the sort that require a napkin and zero apologies. The celebration cake programme has made Dunn's a fixture at North London weddings and birthdays for generations, and the large, welcoming shopfront remains exactly what a great local bakery should feel like. Widely featured as one of North London's most historic artisan operations — and every word of it justified.

dunns-bakery.co.uk

6. Sourdough Sophia — Crouch End

Crouch End, N8 8PL | Rating: 4.7 / 5 | Open daily 8:40am–4:30pm

Born in Sophia Sutton Jones' dining room during lockdown in 2020 and now expanded to four North and North West London locations, Sourdough Sophia is one of those bakery stories that makes you feel genuinely optimistic about small food businesses. The Middle Lane flagship in Crouch End is the original, and it remains the most personal — a tiny, excellent shopfront producing sourdough loaves, hand-laminated croissants, iced cinnamon buns, matcha chocolate slices, spinach and feta swirls, and sandwiches that are worth arriving early for. Among British Baker's best small artisan bakeries, featured in Retail Bulletin, and with an awards cabinet that is growing as fast as the bakery itself.

sourdoughsophia.co.uk

7. Tarn Bakery

Archway, N19 3NB | Rating: 4.8 / 5 | Tues 8:30am–2:00pm; Wed–Fri 8:00am–3:00pm; Sat 9:00am–3:00pm

Opened in December 2023 by Florin Grama — formerly of Pophams and Flor, two of London's most admired bakeries — and Felix Ortona Coles, Tarn is the kind of small-batch operation that serious bread people make pilgrimages for. The tiny Hazellville Road shopfront on the Archway and Highgate border runs on an almost obsessive level of ingredient care: UK wheat sourced from Bruern Farms and Gilchesters, dairy from The Estate Dairy, chocolate from Pump Street. The sourdough loaves are exceptional, the almond croissants are among the finest in North London, and the cardamom buns are reason enough to reroute your entire morning. Good Food Guide reviewed, featured in Hot Dinners, and one of London's most talked-about new bakeries — the ratings suggest the neighbourhood has noticed.

tarnbakery.co.uk

8. La Fromagerie — Highbury

Highbury, N5 2AA | Rating: 4.5 / 5 | Mon–Wed 9:00am–6:00pm; Thur–Fri 9:00am–7:00pm; Sat 9:00am–6:00pm; Sun 9:30am–4:00pm

Technically, La Fromagerie is a cheese shop — world-class, Patricia Michelson-founded, internationally recognised. But the Highbury Park outpost also runs a serious artisan bakery programme producing sourdough loaves, focaccia, seasonal tarts, and pastries of genuinely outstanding quality, all designed to sit alongside one of the finest cheese counters in the city. A visit here is less a quick bakery stop and more a full sensory education in what good food actually looks, smells, and tastes like. If you have never eaten a slice of focaccia with a wedge of something extraordinary from the counter beside it, this is where to start. Featured in virtually every major London and international food guide, and utterly deserving of the attention.

lafromagerie.co.uk

What If Getting There Isn't an Option?

Here is the honest truth about bakery mornings in London: they require effort. The best loaves sell out early. The queues form before 9am. The journey from sofa to sourdough, particularly on a grey Sunday in February, can feel like an expedition requiring levels of motivation that not all of us can reliably muster. It is no coincidence, then, that demand for quality weekend breakfast delivery in London has grown so sharply — or that the most interesting players in that space are the ones thinking seriously about how food is made and how it arrives.

The rise of the pastry subscription UK model reflects something real: people want the quality of an artisan bakery without the compromise of shelf-stable supermarket bread, and they want it delivered in a way that sits alongside their other values. Zero waste bakeries, bike delivery food operations, and producers who bake to order rather than overproduce are answering a question that goes beyond convenience — they are rethinking what the relationship between baker and customer can actually look like. A bread subscription is no longer a novelty; for a growing number of Londoners, it is simply the smartest way to eat well.

Butter & Crust: Artisan Bakery, Delivered

If the bakeries above have made you hungry — or made you wish your Saturday mornings could reliably feel like this — then Butter & Crust was built with you in mind. We work with the best local artisan producers in London to put together a weekly delivery of sourdough, pastries, and breakfast goods that lands at your door by 9am every weekend. In inner London, that means bicycle delivery — low-impact, zero-emission, and genuinely part of how we think about sustainable food delivery in London rather than something bolted on for marketing purposes.

Everything is baked to order, which means no surplus, no waste, and nothing sitting in a warehouse overnight. We are a zero waste bakery London can actually point to — the numbers match the ethos. Packaging is fully recyclable, and our flexible subscription model means you can pause, skip, or cancel whenever life requires it, with no hoops to jump through. We currently cover most of zones 1–3 and are expanding. If you have been meaning to find your version of that perfect Saturday morning — croissant in hand, coffee poured, nowhere to be — this is a very easy place to start.

Find out more at Butter & Crust and start your weekend the right way.

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, December 2025 — Sourdough Sophia
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