Top 10 favorite Bakeries in Paris in 2023

Despite appearances, numerous boulangeries in Paris that look traditional on the outside are, in reality, using industrial methods and non-raw materials, so make sure you know the basics to unlock French most delicious food and wines.

We created a bespoke Essential French Food & Wine Experience to share with you how to spot a high-quality boulangerie. The difference between a “traditional” French baguette and an ordinary one, and between a “butter” croissant and a standard one, among many other exciting details about one of the most historical foods in humankind.

It is no mystery that the best bread is made with a combination of freshly milled organic flour, water, salt, and sourdough (natural yeast). It requires technique, outstanding quality ingredients, and time to allow the development of delicious flavours and aromas provided by the fermentation.

It is also not a mystery that a classic French baguette is an essential ingredient in wine and food pairings. Pairing a French baguette with some local French charcuterie and cheese, makes the perfect combination to match a premium French wine.

The viennoiserie “things from Vienna,” a separate section shared by bakers and pastry makers alike, Ex: croissants, brioche, roulé aux raisins, etc must use the highest fat percentage butter in France to make it to our list.

In France today, it’s surprisingly rare to find a bakery that simultaneously makes excellent bread and pastries. After all, bread-baking (boulangerie) and pastry-making (pâtisserie) are two different career options requiring various training programs. It’s unusual for one shop to master both fully. Our curated list below contains those increasingly rare places that master both crafts: boulangerie & patisserie. You can go with eyes blinded to all of these places.

Boulangerie Mamiche is a trendy neighborhood bakery in the 9th and 10th arrondissements. We highly recommend and support this new generation of woman-owned businesses!

The founders, Victoria Effantin and Cécile Khayat, make a wide range of delicious products making it hard to choose between several types of sourdough bread, ultra buttery viennoiseries, low sugar pastries, and succulent sandwiches for lunch. As mentioned before, being a master of both crafts, bread-baking and pastry-making is uncommon, so make sure to stop by here to enjoy both delicious French baguettes and French pastries.

Our favorite is the Nordic-inspired “pain noir” black bread, A delicious sourdough bread combining rye and spelt flour with lots of seeds mixed in (pumpkin, sunflower, flax, sesame). It is very seedy and slightly sour, which proves a long fermentation and the use of sourdough in the making.

The “chou vanilla” (cream puffs with chantilly) is to die for! The choux pastry has a crispy, golden crust, and the cream is light and delicious, with a powerful vanilla scent that only natural vanilla provides.

Pro tip: Come here early and pick up sandwiches and sweet treats, then head to Canal Saint Martin to enjoy your pic-nic, Parisian style. Don’t miss out on Marseille street and Beaurepair street if you are interested in shopping.

Chef Olivier Magne, the best craftsman bread maker in France in 2015 (MOF), is highly sought after for his innovative, delicate yet unique flavored loaves of bread, viennoiseries, and pastries. All his shops quickly became a neighborhood staple.

We love the multi-seeded baguette with intense nuttiness from the toasted seeds, which had the perfect chewiness-to-crunchiness ratio. The traditional French baguette is praised here.

Viennoiseries are a rich, well-executed, buttery, flaky marvel that pulls apart and melts in your mouth, and pastries are simple yet delightful. Definitely a must on your exploration of the culinary culture of Paris.

The chef makes one of the best Parisian flans using real vanilla pods (see the tiny black dots inside, that’s it). Should we mention not to miss the almond Brioche feuilletée? Pro tip: pick up some delicious sandwiches here and walk up to the Sacre Coeur church in Montmartre for a beautiful picnic with an exceptional view of Paris.

Check out this new generation of French bakers and pastry chefs made up of three brilliant entrepreneurial friends who grew up in the 15th arrondissement of Paris and put together their hip brand of bakeries.

In case you are wondering about the name,  their chef in Australia used to call them French bastards as a joke, so they decided to carry on.

We highly appreciate how innovative these guys are and their love for using only top-quality French products, such as the best organic French flour and Beurre d’Isigny (one of the best in the country).

We particularly love their “Saint-Honoré” pastry which involves a lot of technique; the Babkas are succulent, and their famous “Cruffins” – a hybrid between a croissant and a muffin breaks up some codes in the French tradition.

Pro tip:  take the time to explore this long street and its numerous shops. The north and south parts are very different, multi-cultural & exciting. Don’t forget to stop at a local wine bar to taste premium French wines.

Long time a favorite and highly admired project run by two women, Anna Trattles and Alice Quillet, an ex-Mirabelle bakery in Copenhagen and Tartine in San Francisco.

We love their commitment to artisanal methods and their emphasis on providing a great customer experience. We respect that they keep challenging how French people think about bread since day one, like not baking baguettes or making cruffins. Now when you go home, you are able to get identical French baguettes to share your experiences with friends and family.

Like most of our favorite bakeries in Paris, Ten Bells specializes in sourdough bread, mixing organic stone-milled flour from local heritage grains, water, sea salt, and natural yeasts, long overnight fermentation, and hand-shaped by their expert team of bakers to produce some of the top loaves of bread in Paris.

We are fond of their loaves, which are often sparsed with seeds like sesame, nigella, oat, and flaxseed—a special mention for the golden brioche buns and their hearty, veggie-packed sandwiches. Pro tip: It is a fantastic place for a simply delicious lunch; sit outside on the terrasse and mingle with the local crowd while sipping delicious coffee roasted by Parisian-based Belleville Brûlerie.

Chefs Erwan et Sebastien met on the school benches on their first day of pastry training and never left each other! After a few years of traveling, They found themselves again and opened Utopie in 2014. They were quickly named the best bakery in France in 2016 by a French TV channel.

Utopia is best known for its loaves of bread made from natural sourdoughs such as “L’Auvergnat” (rye bread loaf) or their best seller “L’Authentique” – a combination of high-quality flour, sourdough starter, Guérande sea salt, and water.

Utopia also sells extraordinary, delectable, and creative pastries such as its sesame eclairs and the Sesame seed & lemon tarts. The staff here is always friendly and smiling. You will find this bakery on any French essential food and wine travel guide.

Pro tip: Very up-and-coming and authentic street with fantastic places to eat & drink, such as Delicatessen Cave (wine & small plates), Magma restaurant (Franco-Japanese), and The Hood (Asian-influenced restaurant) at 80 Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 – Best chicken-rice in Paris.

PainPain is a chic bakery, patisserie & cafe serving classic French bread, cakes & pastries created by Sébastien Mauvieux, winner of the best baguette in Paris in 2012. The shop is located on one of the top gourmet food streets in Paris, where you can find many outstanding artisanal food shops: fromagerie, charcuterie, patisserie, etc.

PainPain is the newest addition to our list of favorite bakeries in Paris. We love the “Meule aux fruits” (fruit bread) and their “baguette des prés” (meadow baguette).

In the viennoisserie department the pistachio-chocolate roll is to die for, the “chausson aux pommes” (apple turnover), the Brioche à la cream” (Brioche filled with cream) and the traditional “Baba au rhum” (rhum imbibed pastry dough with chantilly cream) and the “millefeuille with vanilla” from Madagascar are to die for.Pro tip: This is another fantastic shop to pick up delicious fresh baguette sandwiches, pastries, and a drink to head up to Montmartre’s Sacre Coeur church and enjoy the views during your luxury food and wine tour of Paris.

Terroirs d’Avenir is a local shop network promoting products through craftsmanship and advice.

It is located in a tiny street revamped by the famous Chef Greg Marchand, aka “Frenchie,” who built his little empire filled with high-quality Bakers, butchers, fishmongers, cheese makers, and fresh produce sellers.

The boulangerie at the end of the street is tiny but packed with flavor. It is known for its baguettes & croissants. We particularly love the loaf of bread made with heirloom grains from the bakery.

Pro tip: Check out all the shops in the street before heading to Frenchie’s wine bar for a glass of low-intervention wine. The pedestrian market street: Rue de Montergueil and the adjacent streets are a lot of fun.

Magali ex-lawyer and Jean-Francois changed their careers to make their dream of becoming pastry & Boulanger chefs by opening this forward-thinking concept, the modern, relaxed, stylish cafe filled with tempting sweet & savory pastries, well-fermented and tasty loaves of bread & high-quality coffee.

Bo & Mie feels more like a trendy café than a traditional corner bakery. It has an industrial feel, with mostly-unadorned walls and large, bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

Everything here is based on natural sourdough and extended 24-hour fermentations to produce more complex flavors and aromas, mainly using organic French flour, skipping the addition of improvers or preservatives during the production process.

Everything is made on the premises following french tradition closely and using the best quality ingredients, which becomes evident when tasting their loaves of bread, pastries, and viennoiseries. We love tasting their “praliné” bread and the raspberry croissant for a change. Pro tip:  Go upstairs and view one of the oldest and most important streets in Paris “rue de Rivoli” while savoring a heavenly breakfast or French pastries in the afternoon. This place is a great stop before or after your visit to the Louvre Museum or shopping at the beautiful la Samaritaine 9 R. de la Monnaie, 75001 Paris, France.

Christophe Vasseur, the founder of Du pain et des idées, has been going strong for years in the hipster Canal Saint Martin area. he won the Gault-Millau prize for Best Bakery in Paris.

DPEDI has become a well-known shop for international and local lovers of good loaves of bread and viennoiseries. It is one of the top bakeries making the highest quality loaves of bread and one of the most beautiful ones – it looks like an elegant and romantic mini ballroom with its gorgeous 1889 interior and the hand-painted glass ceiling. 

We love the hearty rustic loaves “pain des amis” – crispy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside, the “mini-pavés” – small, doughy loaves of bread filled with cheese, veggies, or other savory ingredients. Be prepared to line up for about 15-20 minutes. Pro tip:  Pick up some bread or pastries with some local Parisian cheeses, head towards the Canal Saint Martin, sit by the water, and watch life pass by.

This shop has been a bakery since the mid-1800s in the trendy upper Marais. Baker Benjamin Turquier changed his career from Finance 20 years ago and took over this historic shop. Tout Autour du Pain is a simple, traditional, neighborhood type of boulangerie; their products are presented with sincerity and honesty.

Ever since Benjamin took over the shop, he has consistently made it to the top 10 best Traditional French baguette and Croissants competition in Paris and won first prize for best butter croissant in 2015 – he only uses one of the most delicious kinds of butter in France from Charantes-Poitou AOC.

We love their excellent range of special loaves of bread “Vanetais” with different savory flavors such as olives, chorizo, and sweet white chocolate, unique! The “Schwartzbrot,” black rye bread rich in sesame and sunflower seeds, is succulent.

You will also find traditional, simple, well-executed, and delightful pastries such as the chocolate eclair, the vanilla flan, and the chocolate fondue.