Across the United States, in major cities and small towns, a bakery renaissance is underway, fueled by a convergence of economics, post-COVID-19 restaurant changes, diners’ tastes and the marketing power of social media. Which is a fancy way of saying that amazing things are coming out of ovens in so many places, made with rigor by former fine-dining pastry chefs and entrepreneurial hobbyists-turned-professionals alike. This is a great time for American bakeries, and here are some of the standard-bearers we have loved from our travels over the last year. — BRIAN GALLAGHER

Bakers Bench

Los Angeles

Jennifer Yee didn’t invent vegan viennoiserie, but her work in the genre has raised expectations about what bakers can achieve with nondairy butter: everything! The croissants at Bakers Bench are excellent, and once you start going for those, it’s hard to stay away from the cookies, muffins and Danishes filled with fruit from the Santa Monica farmers market. For those who look forward to the fleeting pleasures of pithivier season, Yee’s annual take is always a spectacular vision and a thrill — whether you’re vegan or not. — TEJAL RAO

Bánh by Lauren

New York City

During the pandemic, ex-Gramercy Tavern pastry chef Lauren Tran perfected her roster of Vietnamese American and French pastries at Bánh by Lauren, the hugely popular pop-up she ran with her husband, Garland Wong. Now her glorious confections — including chewy, bright green pandan honeycomb cakes, crisp macarons and airy chiffon cakes in flavors like pandan-coconut, Vietnamese coffee and Thai tea — are available at a brick-and-mortar bakery in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown. On the savory side, don’t miss her Chinese sausage, cheddar and chive scones, which make for a salty, brawny counterbalance to all the sweet creaminess of the desserts. — MELISSA CLARK

Cafe Mochiko

Cincinnati

The most memorable pastries at this Ohio sensation — prepare to stand in line — are eye-catching and often straddle the border of sweet and savory. Take the ube halaya croissant, which barely contains its creamy, purple “yam jam” filling, or the sweet corn bibingka, which you may assume is topped with shards of white chocolate before you realize it’s actually cheddar. This is the work of Elaine Uykimpang Bentz, whose Asian American bakery is only part of Cafe Mochiko’s identity. At night it becomes a Japanese restaurant inspired by yoshoku cuisine, overseen by Bentz’s husband and co-chef and -owner, Erik Bentz. The Cincinnati chili ramen, a semiregular special, is locally famous for a reason. — BRETT ANDERSON

Caracas Bakery

Doral, Fla.

You could spend a lazy week traversing greater Miami to learn for yourself what locals already know: that South Florida is home to one of the country’s most dynamic bakery scenes. Or you could just drop by Caracas Bakery. That is where the owner, Jesús Manuel Brazón — with the help of his father, Manuel (also a baker), and mother, Scarlet Rojas (a cachito whisperer) — built a local following, particularly among fellow Venezuelan Americans, while honing his Latin approach to viennoserie and French-style bread baking. It all comes together in flaky croissants and pastelitos, golfeados and kouign-amann palmeritas, and a handsome bâtard the menu calls “campesino.” A second location opened in the MiMo District of Miami in 2022; a Coral Gables spot opened this month. The newer bakeries offer seating (unlike the original). — BRETT ANDERSON

Comadre Panadería

Austin, Texas

Mariela Camacho’s pastries are the stuff of Barbie-fueled, masa-laden dreams. Her conchas are airy with a crackly shell, and bright with flavors like berries or matcha. The pínguína de maracuya, a chocolate-dipped cake filled with passionfruit cream, is one of several offerings that taste like better versions of a nostalgic treat. The showstopper is the pink cake: toasty with corn, tart with a prickly pear buttercream and delightful with sprinkles. Despite their saccharine appearances, not one of the desserts is overly cloying, and even the coffee drinks (Texas pecan horchata! Cranberry vanilla agua fresca!) strike the playful tone of the pastries. — PRIYA KRISHNA

Country Bird

Tulsa, Okla.

Cat Cox came to baking from the art world, and an irreverent, creative sensibility shapes the menu at her bakery in Tulsa. French onion soup Danishes, ube-blue corn coffee cakes, and stuffing-inspired porridge loaves all pop up as specials on the sourdough-heavy pastry and bread menu. When Cox started, she wanted to work with local grains but could not find a single local mill, even though Oklahoma forms part of the country’s wheat belt. So she found a farmer to sell to her and milled her own. The bakery is open Saturdays and occasionally weekdays, announced on social media and in a newsletter. Before opening, there’s usually a line down the block. — MEGHAN MCCARRON

Diane’s Place

Minneapolis

This all-day restaurant is where Diane Moua realizes her dream of cooking Hmong American cuisine in her personal style. It’s also where the career pastry chef proves that spreading her attention across an entire menu doesn’t come at the expense of high-quality baking. Diane’s Place, which opened last spring, undoubtedly sells a lot of coconut pandan croissants and sweet pork Danishes at breakfast, but it never stops being a bakery. Diners who come in for lunch and dinner are asked if they’d like to start with a course of baked goods. The answer should always be yes. — BRETT ANDERSON

Evergreen Butcher and Baker

Atlanta

It’s no secret that Atlanta is not a bread town, which makes Evergreen so special. But the cozy bakery and butcher shop Emma and Sean Schacke opened in 2019 could hold its own in bread meccas like San Francisco and New York. People know to grab two of Emma Schacke’s sturdy, naturally leavened baguettes if there are any left by the time you make it through the line, though the real gems are denser offerings like the whole-grain rye loaf called vollkornbrot. Her croissants, brown sugar buns and seasonal turnovers are on point, as are the fermented hamburger buns she makes to hold beef her husband grinds as part of his whole-animal butchery. — KIM SEVERSON

Flour & Flower

St. Joseph, Minnesota

Erin Lucas and Mateo Mackbee moved to central Minnesota to create the life they couldn’t imagine as chefs working in the Twin Cities. Their dream was realized in St. Joseph, a community of 7,000 about 70 miles northwest of Minneapolis. Hicks is a big-city pastry chef whose breads and pastries — there is maple icing on her cardamom rolls and rosemary streusel atop the seasonal cranberry croissant — give locals good reason to wake up early; pizza brings them back Monday nights. The bakery also supplies Krewe, the New Orleans-style restaurant across the alley, where Mackbee is the chef. — BRETT ANDERSON

Gusto Bread

Long Beach, Calif.

If it’s hard to imagine an improvement on the kouign-amann — that perfectly caramelized helix of salted butter and dough from Brittany, France — then it’s time to try the Nixtamal Queen, completely transformed by an addition of sourdough and nixtamalized corn. It’s just one taste of what Gusto can do. Informed by Mexican and Indigenous traditions, Arturo Enciso and Ana Belén Salatino run a neighborhood panadería with an expressive, unconventional and highly delicious approach that extends to conchas, multigrain breads and seasonal pastries that make the bakery a destination. — TEJAL RAO

Koffeteria

Houston

Take a trip through the brain of chef Vanarin Kuch, where beef pho belongs in a pastry, Chinese sausage goes into a breakfast taco and the butter mochi tastes like banana bread. These may sound like eccentric attempts at virality, but at Koffeteria, the combinations feel intentional — and their tastes can be enlightening. Some of Kuch’s offerings are rooted in his Cambodian American identity — he makes cornbread with the coconutty, scallion-forward flavors of Cambodian street corn — while others are odes to Houston’s multicultural makeup. But most of the fun of Koffeteria is having no idea what Kuch will do next, and eagerly awaiting his next innovation. — PRIYA KRISHNA

Lagniappe Bakehouse

New Orleans

Kaitlin Guerin is a former professional dancer who bakes like a storyteller. The Vaucroissant — a signature item at the bakery she opened in September with her partner, filmmaker Lino Asana — is a lattice croissant filled with sausage from Vaucresson’s, a venerable Black-owned company in the Seventh Ward neighborhood of New Orleans. Benne seeds, an ingredient introduced by enslaved Africans to South Carolina, dot the surface of toffee cookies. Cornbread muffins come wrapped in the husks of the corn they’re made with. New Orleanians have been enjoying an upsurge in quality bakeries for over 10 years now, but Guerin brings something new to her hometown: phenomenal pastries in conversation with Black history. — BRETT ANDERSON

Loaf Lounge

Chicago

To understand how baking can be equal parts science and art, see the impressive croissants here. Sarah Mispagel’s butter-rich croissants are a feat of lamination wonder, an impossible number of flaky layers curling fractal-like into themselves. They’re handed off to the bakery’s co-owner and Mispagel’s husband, Ben Lustbader, who piles on house-smoked spicy capicola, eggs, Muenster cheese and pear mostarda to create arguably Chicago’s finest breakfast sandwich. Loaf Lounge, opened in 2022, is the product of a pastry-savory tag team that’s as deft in producing oatmeal cream pies and crusty sourdough loaves as composed sandwiches (the smoked kabocha with salsa macha is meat-free and memorable). That’s not even mentioning their most viral offering, the very chocolate cake — rich, classic in every way — that Mispagel created for the TV show “The Bear.” — KEVIN PANG

Loblolly Bakery

Hattiesburg, Miss.

In this town, Robert St. John is his own restaurant-media industrial complex. A vocal local, he has spent most of the last 40 years channeling his dual passions — food and Mississippi — into a cluster of local restaurants, as well as newspaper columns, television shows, a dozen cookbooks and more. Loblolly, his first-ever bakery, opened last year. Donald Bender, the head baker, brings a deep well of experience to a project that brings a lot to this corner of south Mississippi: fresh baked croissants, bagels and sweet morning rolls, along with expertly made bread, fruit pies and sandwiches. The sausage biscuits alone are worth pulling off the highway to enjoy, and you don’t even need that much time — there’s a drive-thru. — BRETT ANDERSON

Lysée

New York City

Is it corn, or is it cake? This whimsical trompe l’oeil, made of corn-flavored sponge coated in painstakingly piped kernels of corn mousse, might just be one of the most well known — and eye-catching — desserts in Manhattan. At Lysée, all of Eunji Lee’s pastries, which mix Korean flavors like yuja and toasty brown rice with French techniques, are as interesting to eat as they are to look at. Even the chocolate cake (called “VIC,” or “very important chocolate cake”) sprouts delicate petals of chocolate mousse, with a puddle of timut pepper caramel in the center. Lee’s minimalist precision extends to the bakery itself, which feels like a museum, proudly showcasing the pastries on brightly lit tables like the artworks that they are. — PRIYA KRISHNA

Machine Shop

Philadelphia

In a former auto body shop in a one-time technical high school, Emily Riddell is transforming freshly milled flour and sugar and seasonal produce into laminated pastries like jammy egg and pepper croissants, orange cardamom morning buns and quince Danish. When the pandemic abruptly halted their wholesale baking business, Riddell and her then-business partner, Katie Lynch, pivoted, starting pop-ups to sell treats directly to the public on the building’s first floor. By 2022, Riddell had converted the space into a full-fledged bakery selling viennoiserie, as well as delicate canelés, cookies made with three types of ginger, and beautiful lemon tarts capped with torched meringue. The shop’s car lift and air pump remain — alongside velvet banquettes and a huge custom pastry case popping with some of the city’s best baked goods. — REGAN STEPHENS

The Place

Camden, Maine

Laminated pastries are having a moment right now all over North America, with dexterous bakers flexing their buttery prowess across a spectrum of pastries. At the Place, a tiny bakery, the ethereally flaky croissant dough (made with local flour and butter) appears in many forms and flavors — swirled into cinnamon buns, folded and sugared into kouign-amanns, layered into loaves. The offerings change weekly, in tune with the seasons and available produce. Which means you’ll have to wait until summer for the savory heirloom tomato Danishes and wild blueberry hand pies. Happily, pastries like the ham and cheese croissants and morning buns dusted with coriander and lemon will tide you over until then. — MELISSA CLARK

Poulette Bakeshop

Parker

A suburban strip mall is an unlikely destination for world-class French pastry, but the lucky residents of this metro Denver town have exactly that in Poulette Bakeshop. Opened in 2021 by Alen Ramos and Carolyn Nugent, married pastry chefs who spent nearly two decades honing their skills in top kitchens, Poulette has pastry cases furnished daily with an army of their creations, whose technique rivals the best bakeries in Paris but with a distinctly American palate. There are croissants and kouign-amann, yes. But to stop there would be like climbing the first few hundred feet of a 14er. Continue onward into éclairs, macarons, brioche, crème brûlée and even a killer biscuit sandwich. — MEGHAN MCCARRON

Quail & Condor

Healdsburg, Calif.

From the tech-burdened suburbs of Silicon Valley, north past wine country, the Bay Area possesses an embarrassment of riches when it comes to exceptional bakeries. At Quail & Condor, Melissa Yanc and her husband, Sean McGaughey, run the gamut with luscious chocolate Champagne cakes, sourdough smacked with tang and pastries with lamination close to translucent. The bread program here stands out, which is no surprise given Yanc’s experience working at some of the best bakeries and restaurants in the country, including Bien Cuit in New York, Gjusta in Los Angeles and SingleThread, also in Healdsburg. Seasonal treats like malted strawberry mini cakes and densely moist carrot cake also make the 70-mile drive up from San Francisco worthwhile. — ELEANORE PARK

Radio Bakery

New York City

Much about Radio Bakery is frustrating: That it’s located in the upper reaches of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. That there’s always a line down the block on weekends. That it routinely closes early because everything is sold out. But above all, that its baked goods are frustratingly delicious. Croissants in the shape of Danishes filled with seasonal delights — woody mushrooms with caramelized shallots one month, a perfect slice of a perfect heirloom tomato the next. The focaccia breakfast sandwiches stuffed with plush cream cheese, dill and smoked salmon. The perfect-for-later brown butter corn cake. Which is all to say that any frustration melts away once you’ve got one of their baked goods in hand. — NIKITA RICHARDSON

Saint Bread

Seattle

There are few places more pleasant in Seattle for baked goods than this spot tucked by the shores of Portage Bay. The cardamom croissant is a laminated, convoluted delight, like a not-too-sweet kouign-amann. The cinnamon-Okinawan sugar toast is a pillowy slab of morning comfort. And no self-respecting breakfast joint omits an egg-and-cheese sandwich. This one comes on either Hawaiian bread or melonpan, a Japanese sweetbread domed with a thin cookielike crust. Both bring a nice sweet-savory balance, especially if you’ve opted to add the Japanese-style smoked turkey sausage. — BRIAN GALLAGHER

The Sour

Rapid City, South Dakota

Rapid City is in the throes of a croissant obsession, and baker Peter Mitchell is doing the best he can to keep up. After starting as a cottage baker in 2020, Mitchell opened a commercial kitchen with his wife, Makenzie, and, in 2024, a charming full-service bakery in a historic brick building downtown. All of it is driven by insatiable demand for sourdough loaves, sourdough croissants and anything else Mitchell perfects. A self-taught baker at what he calls the “University of YouTube,” Mitchell strives to give his community a great destination for baked goods right at home. “We’re not trying to be good for Rapid; we’re trying to be good for anywhere,” he says. — MEGHAN MCCARRON