Fred Bakery

Bread comes out first here and pastry runs to the end of the day, which is the simplest way to read this London bakery and its two central counters.

Breads, pastries and a sandwich board

Fred Bakery started in Holborn in 2021 and works from heritage technique toward something contemporary, with each bake pitched on precision and balance rather than novelty. The offer is wider than a bread shelf: artisanal loaves share the counter with pastries, sandwiches and seasonal hot drinks, and the savoury side has grown into a proper lunch option. Named bakes include a cinnamon roll, an apple crumble danish and a triple chocolate hazelnut cookie, while the savoury run covers a ham and cheese suisse, a parma ham ciabatta, a mortadella panini and focaccia pizza with burrata and tomatoes. The Good Food Guide listed it among Britain’s Best Bakeries for 2026.

Two rooms, two moods

The original Holborn site is small and lively, with seating indoors and out and the traffic of a working district passing the window. The Oxford Circus outpost, added later, is the more designed of the two: a split-level room with café curtains, dark wood and marble counters carrying the goods, arranged to feel like a retreat from the street rather than an extension of it. Between them the bakery covers three jobs without straining: a daily bread and pastry stop, a coffee-and-pastry pause, and a light lunch built on sandwiches, panini, ciabatta and focaccia pizza. Both counters carry the same bread and pastry programme, so choosing between them is a question of mood rather than menu. The kitchen shifts with the seasons, so the counter is never quite a fixed list.

Start with the apple crumble danish

Order around the named bakes, since they show most clearly what the bakery is after. The apple crumble danish is the signature sweet, folding a familiar British dessert into a pastry-case format. The cinnamon roll is the straightforward comfort order and the triple chocolate hazelnut cookie the denser, richer one. For something savoury, the ham and cheese suisse and the focaccia pizza with burrata and tomatoes are the clearest expressions of how bread turns into lunch, with the parma ham ciabatta and mortadella panini close behind. Seasonal hot drinks sit alongside. The craft here is described at house level rather than through a named baker, and the bakes make the argument.