| Updated:
Bakers have developed the clout of mixologists, finds Adam Bloodworth
Anna Higham finds it extremely stressful when a queue forms outside her Quince bakery in Islington.
She feels that, by definition, a line means she can’t give her best service, but she acknowledges that for many of the capital’s bakery touring elite, the absence of one is even more concerning.
After all, Vogue has named sourdough the hottest accessory of 2026, and you’d hardly expect to walk straight into a fashion party.
No matter how long the line gets, Higham always does the same job. She packaging up cakes and hands them across the counter herself, making sure she rewards everyone who comes in with a personal interaction, thanking them for standing outside in the cold.
Higham keeps those out on the street sated by having her staff hand out freebie palmiers – puff pastry cookies – to people while they wait.
Online, videos of meringue tearing, bread ripping and cream dolloping transfix doomscrollers. Videos about ‘cloud’ bread and ice cream cake have been watched billions of times, and this hysteria is propelling those who produce panettone and egg tarts to rock stars of the post-booze era.
The best London bakeries to try
This last point is key: because fewer people are drinking, they’re looking for other ways to be hedonistic.
Delicious-looking bakery content is also easy to capture: all you need is a fiver and a phone to film with and you can sit back, take a bite, and watch your followers pile up. Cruffins, giant donuts, ‘swicy’ flavours, botanical infusions and pistachio-flavoured everything have pervaded the ‘gram, and everyone’s hungry as hell.
“We’re two blocks up from the canal and the queue can hit the water,” Higham says of the weekend day trippers who line up outside Quince.
Her brown butter buns are the most popular, made using a recipe she developed while working at the Michelin starred but now-closed Lyle’s restaurant in Shoreditch (one of the capital’s most revered CVs, Higham has also worked at Bread Street Kitchen and Pétrus in London, and at Gramercy Tavern in New York City).
Really, she’d rather the noise went away: as much as Higham understands the value of smiling for her fans and giving them each a special moment, she doesn’t much identify with the personality-driven part of her job.
Bakers, she says, lack the “cheffy ego” common in kitchens, so they aren’t so bothered by the praise.
What’s more, Higham worries that locals will be hit hardest by her popularity. Unable to simply wander down the road to pick up bread in the mornings because of the viral interest drawing visitors from her parts of London and in some cases further afield (the bakery boom is far from London exclusive, with Farro in Bristol, Bread Source in Norfolk, and Northern Rye in Newcastle upon Tyne regularly generating huge queues and online hype).
The London bakers treated like mixologists
This sort of hysteria used to be reserved for mixologists. Bearded, bespectacled men who wax lyrical about ageing and distillation. But then that went out of fashion, with many looking for healthier ways to spend their weekends.
Bakeries are also an affordable luxury. At some of London’s most expensive and Instagrammable hotels, if you can’t afford to book a room, then go in for a pastry.
Bakeries have become central to the growth strategy at The Maybourne Group, which operates The Berkeley, Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Emory. At The Berkeley in Knightsbridge, Cedric Grolet’s cakes often sell out by midday.
Fans buy into the concept that they look exactly like fruit, and the al fresco seating area is often full, appearing from the outside more like a traditional restaurant – but then you look at the plates: these days, dessert is a serious pastime.
Popular dishes include Grolet’s Le Citron, which is bright yellow with yuzu, lemon curd and almond and has a shiny, waxy exterior, exactly like a lemon. These cakes, made using classical French patisserie techniques, appeal to an international audience. In contrast, the newly opened Claridge’s Bakery serves fancy versions of iced fingers, Bakewell tarts, fondant fancies and Jammy Dodger tarts, playfully paying homage to nostalgic British treats.
Inside the best bakeries in London
It’s the latest frontier in the luxury baking boom. Richard Hart, head baker at Claridge’s Bakery, finds it hilarious that he’s being asked to pose for selfies. “Back in the day, baking was the lowest form of [kitchen] job,” Hart tells me. “It’s crazy that bakers have become pin-ups. Vogue did this piece saying sourdough was the accessory of 2026 – what the hell?”
It’s hard to overstate the rise and rise of bread. Taylor Swift has driven the popularity of sourdough by gifting her friends handmade loaves at parties (Selena Gomez, Radio 1’s Greg James and US TV host Jimmy Fallon have all spoken about receiving loaves from the singer). The Haim sisters were recently photographed leaving an LA restaurant with armfuls of the stuff, the bread making as big a statement as their sartorial choices.
Hart, formerly of San Francisco’s Tartine and Copenhagen’s Hart Bageri, says advances in flavour and more expressive cooking styles are also driving the popularity.
Lore among cheffing circles is that bakeries are nicer places to work than restaurant kitchens. There is less of the toxic aggression and shouting, which has inspired cooks to transition, bringing with them fresh culinary perspectives.
“There was a time when I was a kid when bakeries were just kind of sweet,” he says. “Now bakers really care about how that piece of pastry tastes. I just think the standard has improved across the board, in Paris, Copenhagen, London. The flavours have got really nuanced and thoughtful. We really care about our ingredients and what they taste like.”
‘It’s all getting a bit samey’
Claridge’s Bakery is also “making a stand” against homogenous bakeries all making the same items. “It’s all become a bit samey,” says Hart. “I think social media has led bakers to make similar things. I’d like to see us go back to our roots.”
A quiet revolution may be taking place in Mayfair, but Hart’s Jammy Dodger tarts have strong competition from the capital’s 200-plus French patisseries, each of whom proclaim that Continental styles are the best.
Rather than Hart’s fuss-free cakes, which emanate hazy nostalgia for a bygone Britain, French patisserie items tend to be all delicate piping, lamination and emulsification as their creators seek the perfect cakes, like fine pieces of jewellery as pleasing on the eye as they are to taste.
At the boujie end of the spectrum are destinations including Grolet, Ladurée at Harrods and Miel Bakery in Bloomsbury, although Cafe Concerto and Paul make affordable versions for the masses. Nicolas Rouzaud’s eponymous bakery at The Connaught is one of the capital’s finest examples of top level French patisserie, drawing queues and viral noise.
His new opening, Le Cafe, fuses a bar, cafe and bakery, bringing a huge range of cakes into the sort of environment where you’d typically get drunk. Much like Cedric Grolet at The Berkeley, Le Cafe encourages you to hang around for a couple of hours, inviting you to slow down and dress up to have a pastry; to take the pursuit of cake eating as seriously as dinner.
Order a cake, and Daft Punk plays in the background
“I haven’t seen this elsewhere in London,” says Rouzaud. “You have brunch places but they don’t have this range of cakes. Or if you have this range of cakes they don’t do savoury. There’s plenty of coffee shops – we wanted to open something different.”
Alongside the cake, you can order champagne or a cocktail while Daft Punk plays in the background. It’s a sophisticated spot, with powder pink walls and an evolving electronic playlist, all of which adds to the sense of escapist whimsy. The building itself displays its original teeny-tiny Grade II-listed door and windy-windy staircase.
On the menu is Rouzaud’s French spin on a Victoria Sponge, an indulgent pistachio gateau and towering pear chocolate tart. Savoury items include his father’s brioche with ham and egg.
In an era driven by reductions in drinking and increased mindfulness, perhaps Le Cafe is the surest sign yet that pastries are the new beers, and that hanging out at the cake shop is the new getting pissed in a bar.
The French chef-turned-baker, who led the team at Le Bristol Paris for seven years and formerly worked at The Lanesborough, says that when he moved to the UK ten years ago, cheffing was not a “high society” job. “Now it is becoming more and more trendy.” Despite Swift’s backing, the one loser in all this has been bread.
Top bakers: ‘Sourdough is overrated’
Not the sugared, set-dressed pastry, or the ornate cup cake, but the humble loaf, which Anna Higham from Quince says doesn’t sell nearly as well as it used to. “I’d say every baker wants to sell more bread than they do,” she says. “People want very photogenic pretty bakes, that’s the easiest thing to sell.”
The Yummy Mummy brigade will be shocked to hear that Hart, too, thinks sourdough is overrated. “I love making a bloomer, a granary loaf, they take me back in time to my grandparents’ house. That doesn’t happen with sourdough.” Convincing the aesthetically driven to engage with baking’s carby, stodgy roots may be her toughest job yet.
Richard Hart is another of the bakers who isn’t entirely wooed by the new world order. At 49, he’s of the generation more comfortable with “going out and getting pissed at the weekend” than labouring over a fondant fancy. “It’s crazy, really,” he says of the noise. “I’m not a rock star. I just make bread.”
#Londons #bakers #mixologists