As long as we’ve had butter, sugar, and Instagram, lines have formed for the croissant of the moment, or the doughnut of the moment, or the croissant-doughnut hybrid of the moment. Maybe you’ve camped out to try the latest pastry monopolizing your own feed, which would make it easy to stroll right past another queue and shrug it off as the result of some fad. But follow the procession that takes shape each day outside of Librae Bakery in Manhattan’s East Village and it will lead you someplace special.
In a kitchen framed by big glass windows, a team of bakers turn out zippy za’atar-labneh morning buns and saag-inspired focaccia dressed with braised greens, garam masala, and pickled chiles. These pastries bring together ingredients and influences—of Morocco, India, Denmark, and Bahrain, among others—that might not ordinarily find their way into one treat, and artfully capture their makers’ identities. The results, as Librae’s legion of fans will attest, aren’t just picture-perfect algorithm fodder. They’re delicious proof of a baking revolution that has been building for years, one that’s reached its flaky, layered, pastry-cream-topped peak.
Librae is part of a nationwide shift that’s been building for years, as bakers push back against rigid expectations of authenticity—and incorporate their lived experiences into their work. Breadbelly, which opened in San Francisco in 2018, blends Asian ingredients and baking traditions with Californian influences, leading to creations like dulce de leche-filled sesame cookies and focaccia topped with mapo tofu. In Chicago, the Filipino restaurant Kasama, which opened in 2020 to much fanfare, fills its pastry case with matcha-pandan eclairs and decadent foie gras danishes, along with more traditional European offerings; and Third Culture Bakery in Berkeley has been turning out kimchi and cheese-topped mochi waffles and chewy, many-flavored mochi donuts since 2018.
This movement was fast-tracked in the early days of the pandemic, as dedicated pastry roles in restaurants became scarce. Pastry chefs needed work, and selling their boxed-up goods online was a way to stay afloat, but for some, being freed from the confines of restaurant menus also created space to experiment and stretch out. They harnessed their creativity into dishes like street corn focaccia and Spam musubi-inspired croissants.
Now, an entire constellation of hard-to-define bakeries is reshaping what baking looks like in America. The nine bakeries on this list exemplify this movement, imbuing their work with an unmistakable flair and sense of personality. They’re helmed by people who value experimentation and self-expression over strict ideas about what does and doesn’t belong in a scone, a concha, or any number of classic pastries.
At Comadre Panadería in Austin, baker Mariela Camacho has updated the classic Barbie-pink sheet cake of her youth to incorporate local grain and a coat of prickly pear buttercream. In New Orleans there are king cakes that pull apart like braided babka, and in Detroit, puffy Roman maritozzi filled with makrut lime whipped cream. These bakeries offer something much more rare than a precisely laminated croissant: pastries with a story to tell. The kind worth waiting in line for. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor
This list is organized alphabetically.
Ayu Bakehouse
With its light blue façade, white shuttered windows, and stately columns, Ayu Bakehouse blends in with the historic architecture of downtown New Orleans. But inside the space is sleek and modern, with a display of pastries that deftly nod to local flavors and pull from those of New York, Southeast Asia, and beyond. From the dining room, there’s a clear view of the workstation where bakers spin out flaky red bean rolls, muffuletta breadsticks, and kaya morning buns. The bakery’s take on the iconic king cake is a braided crown of babka, a nod to New York’s Breads Bakery, where co-owners Kelly Jacques and Samantha Weiss met. Boudin, the famed Cajun pork and rice sausage, makes an appearance as well, sandwiched between layers of laminated dough alongside soft-boiled eggs for something akin to a ham and cheese croissant—or maybe a Hot Pocket. These combinations might not be traditional to New Orleans, but they make perfect sense in one of America’s most diverse and thriving food cities. —Kate Kassin
Comadre Panadería
The Earl Grey concha at Comadre Panadería is striking: a plush swirl of dough dotted with chocolate chunks and draped in a ridged sugary armor. It’s visually similar to a traditional concha but a far cry from the ones Mariela Camacho grew up eating as a first-generation Xicana in Texas. The rotating menu at her small East Austin bakery explores and celebrates this dynamic, as Camacho puts her spin on everything from alfajores to apple fritters. In addition to revolving conchas in flavors like red berry, Mexican hot chocolate, and hibiscus, there are tender chocolate-dipped puerquitos (cute little pig-shaped cookies) and square sourdough croissants cradling pools of mole. Even Camacho’s take on a traditional panadería sheet cake is special. Varnished with a pink prickly pear buttercream and speckled with rainbow sprinkles, it looks like a standard birthday cake. Each delicious bite, humming with the gentle flavor of heirloom Texas corn, is at once familiar and entirely unexpected. —Olivia Quintana
Gusto Bread
Some will say the star at Gusto Bread is the Doña, a twice-baked concha layered with almond cream, seasonal jam—peach one week, prickly pear the next—and finished with a dramatic storm of slivered almonds and powdered sugar. Others have eyes only for the Nixtamal Queen, an ingenious play on a classic kouign-amann featuring layer upon layer of masa, sourdough, and butter. Each flowerlike edge is gloriously caramelized and chewy, with just a whisper of sweet corn. Equally impressive are the orejas, thin and flaky pastry hearts dusted with heady toasted corn husk sugar. At the Long Beach bakery, which opened in 2020, baker Arturo Enciso and partner Ana Belén Salatino pay respect to tradition while blending Mexican and European approaches to baking, rewriting and marrying until each of their creations positively sings. Leaving Gusto with just one of these pastries is an ill-advised exercise in restraint. —Elazar Sontag
Librae Bakery
A full pastry case is a rare sight at Librae Bakery. You’ll have to arrive before the troves of loyal fans and eager first-timers clear it out—which is to say, early. But it’s worth setting an alarm for: Halva croissants rub elbows with flaky disks carrying layers of Marmite and cheddar, babka buns flecked with black lime, and a uniform army of tahini chocolate chunk cookies. These baked goods are recognizable in form but incorporate creative and unexpected flavor combinations at every opportunity. One of Librae’s most popular (and photographed) pastries is a croissant that splits at the seam to reveal a rich frangipane perfumed with pistachio and rose. The treat embodies Librae’s approach to baking, which draws together flavors from across the Middle East and countless other baking traditions. New York is saturated with glitzy pastry chefs turning out croissants and sourdough boules—but Librae, with its genre-bending flavors and manifold influences, emerges from the pack as the rare bakery with something new to say. —Li Goldstein; photographs by Isa Zapata
Loquat
Weekends are special at Loquat, a San Francisco bakery that opened in 2022 and taps into the diverse baking traditions of the Jewish diaspora. That’s when you’ll find platters of the Yemeni bread called kubaneh, a savory pull-apart loaf served in hypnotically precise spirals. Lead pastry chef Kristina Costa rolls the buttery dough with nigella seeds and serves each platter with bowls of briny feta, a bounty of bite-size vegetables, plump olives from Palestine, and sliced and fanned-out hard-boiled eggs. It’s a dish that’s hard to find outside of home kitchens and one of many ways that Loquat honors the past. The ancient Shabbat specialty has been recreated with an eye for tradition but shares snug café tables with decidedly more modern interpretations of Jewish baking. There are braided loaves of babka amped-up with cardamom and ricotta, fat slices of banana-date cake inspired by Southern hummingbird cake, and dainty pine nut tarts that are this bakery’s answer to pecan pie— each pastry a delicious reminder of where Jewish baking has been and where it’s headed. —Elazar Sontag
Onggi
131 Washington Ave, Portland, ME
Onggi is not quite a bakery at first glance. Inside the cheery green market in Portland’s East End, you’ll be met by shelves stocked with carefully sourced treasures like koji salt, sea urchin shoyu, and wild Maine blueberry sriracha, plus a cooler of assorted kimchis and sauerkrauts. But while the fermentation-focused shop is named for the Korean earthenware vessels in which many of these products come to life, some of Onggi’s finest work is tucked into a small pastry case near the register. Co-owners Marcus Im, Amy Ng, and Erin Zobitz, who opened the shop in April 2021, offer a tight rotating roster of baked goods that highlight fermentation, including chocolate chip cookies bearing an unmistakable sourdough twang and savory kimchi-cheddar-corn soufflés reminiscent of Korean American corn cheese. A heavy dose of miso in a scallion-flecked scone offers a punch of pungent soy and an almost caramellike nuttiness. Each umami-packed bite is a triumphant reminder that fermentation in baking is the domain of so much more than bread. —Kate Kassin
Rize Up
Azikiwee Anderson started selling loaves of sourdough out of his backyard in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. He saw his fledgling business, Rize Up, as a way to channel energy into something healing while pushing the art of bread forward. Anderson’s classic boules are as shapely and golden as any, but his most eye-catching bakes blend traditional sourdough techniques with bold spices and unexpected ingredients. He makes the convincing case that bread is at its most delicious—and interesting—when treated as a stage for all sorts of culinary intervention. One loaf is stained with turmeric and charged with cumin, curry leaves, and cilantro. Another invokes the spirit of gumbo with little morsels of andouille, okra, and sautéed bell pepper. Reinventing sourdough is not easy to do in San Francisco, where this baking practice has been akin to religion for more than a century. But as Rize Up bread is carted off to grocery stores, farmers markets, and restaurants to meet its many fans, it would seem Anderson is well on his way. —Elazar Sontag
Saint Bread
Clusters of cyclists post up in front of Saint Bread and nibble on shimmering saffron buns whose cardamom-spiced slopes and ridges conceal rich ginger pastry cream. Nearby, just feet from the serene Lake Washington Ship Canal, families tuck into fried egg sandwiches on sweet Japanese melonpan that sport crackly cookie domes. These creations come from an expert team of bakers who have danced between French, Japanese, Scandinavian, and American flavors and techniques since opening this bakery in 2021. They dress a Spanish-style tortilla with Kewpie mayonnaise and all the trappings of Japanese okonomiyaki and fill Norwegian school buns—sweet yeasted rolls usually containing vanilla custard—with rotating fillings like toasted coconut pastry cream, cherry blossom mascarpone, and caramelized pineapple. These pastries would be irresistible even under the glare of LED office lights. In Saint Bread’s cathedral-like storefront, awash in warmly tinted sunlight, they’re downright magical. —Elazar Sontag
Warda Pâtisserie
Warda Pâtisserie is as Detroit as a bakery can get. While the baked goods on offer here pull influences from around the globe, they’re just as much a reflection of their immediate surroundings, a city with French street names, Mexican and Greek restaurant districts, and suburbs with more than 300,000 people of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry. Owner Warda Bouguettaya, who won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in 2022, is a native of Algeria. Her background and training in France and Asia shine through in creations like chocolate halvah cookies, madeleines kissed by passion fruit glaze, and a to-die-for mango cheesecake. Her savory Greek torta, a square puff pastry shell filled with greens, olives, and feta, would stand out anywhere in the world, but here in Michigan, it has the unmistakable crispy-edge crunch of the best Detroit pizza. —Jamila Robinson; photographs by Gerard + Belevender