The new affordable luxury is not something you wear but something you eat, and we’re lining up for these exquisite, intricate jewels on Sunday mornings. Artisanal bakeries are on the rise with new takes on old classics, and reinventions of what we thought a pastry, or bread, could be. 

Dark-crusted sourdough, kouign-amanns, geometry-worthy croissants, brulee-topped doughnuts and their kind are at the forefront of our epicurean attention as a new crop of bakers, many of them former chefs, turn their creativity and careers to baking.

These are not the humble neighbourhood bakeries of the past, which served buns filled with cream and topped with a retro glacé cherry, passionfruit-studded vanilla slices – aka “snot blocks” – and spongy Vegemite scrolls. 

A miso-glazed Portuguese tart with croissant base at Tenacious Bakehouse in Sydney’s Darlinghurst takes four days to make and costs $12. A small taste of luxury, the pastries are made with the same expertise and quality produce that we might expect in some of our finest restaurants. 

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At St Leonards bakery and cafe Moon Phase, the signature bar croissant is a new take on a pain au chocolat but looks like a glistening piece of jewellery or art; a baton of swirled laminated chocolate pastry. 

Melbourne’s eclectic bakeries celebrate baked things from around the world. At south-side favourite Little Sister, challah and bagels are a weekend must have. There are usually queues for pide and flatbreads at A1 Bakery and for raspberry-swirled croissants at South Melbourne’s agathe. Lune Croissanterie’s is counted among one of the world’s best croissants.

A new artisanal bakery seems to open every week in Sydney, to much applause. Lune Croissanterie announced recently it will have new permanent digs in Sydney’s Rosebery, and Shadow Baking’s permanent position next door to Messina in Darlinghurst is turning out the likes of a Mont Blanc tart with caramelised pears, vanilla cream diplomat, baked meringue and swirls of chestnut cream. This is the new fine dining. 

The hugely popular A.P Bakery, which has outposts in Surry Hills, Newtown and the CBD, has plans for a new kind of hybrid bakery venue in the near future that will be more polished and traditional than its other stores. “It will be the polar opposite and be more refined, have a bit more of that traditional British vibe, with something to have a glass of Chablis with,” A.P Bakery head baker, Dougal Muffet, told delicious. “It’s an evolution of the bakery,” he says.

Sydney meanwhile has faced a raft of restaurant shut down announcements this year, including Tetsuya Wakuda’s culinary landmark Tetsuya, South Eveleigh’s Lucky Kwong, the CBD omakase Tempura Kuon, the casually luxe Bar Grazie and others. 

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Melbourne’s best bakeries are also on the rise. In 2023 much loved bakeries like Flaco Bakery, A1 Bakery, Penny for Pound and All Are Welcome opened new outposts, while Attica’s first-ever pastry chef, HyoJu Park and her chef partner Rong Yao Soh opened Madeleine de Prout, leaning heavily into nostalgia with its madeleines, offering flavours like pandan-coconut, pistachio and poppin’ corn.

According to numbers provided by Westpac from their DataX program, Australians spent 8 per cent more with bakeries in January and February this year compared with the same period last year. They are also spending more per transaction, up 1.8 per cent. While many restaurants report tough times, bakeries seem to be a glimmer of hope for our hospitality industry. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, hundreds of people queue on weekends for pastries costing upwards of $13 each; a beautiful affordable luxury.

A.P Bakery’s Muffet hopes this is not a “boom and bust moment” for bakeries. “Hopefully it’s an adaptation” to the way people eat, he says. The biggest change to the industry has been in Sydney, according to Muffet, who says the harbour city has done big-name bakeries traditionally, while Melbourne has enjoyed artisanal bakeries for years. “That’s changing. Now the artisanal scene is more popular, and with the competition everyone ups their game,” says Muffet. 

When it opened 20 years ago, Bourke Street Bakery was one of only a few bakeries selling sourdough bread and more artisanal products. Now it’s not uncommon to see three or four artisanal bakeries in a single inner city suburb.

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Tuga Pastries, with stores in Sydney’s Clovelly and Alexandria, and Darlinghurst bakery Tenacious Bakehouse, focus on innovation, allowing their customers to lead the way with what they love and want more of. Tenacious head baker and owner Jin Park says he regularly introduces new specials to attract social media attention and please existing customers. “Some customers ask me ‘what if you make onigiri croissants’, so I listen to their opinion.” 

The social media side of baking is both a blessing and a curse, says A.P Bakery’s Muffet. “We wouldn’t see the same success without Instagram, but if I see one more croissant cookie I’m going to cry. Instagram can distract from what we are doing if we’re all looking for the next viral thing,” he says.

“I saw someone making a focaccia with cookie dough the other day and I thought ‘why?’. Call me a traditionalist but they are not adding to the scene,” says Muffet.

The next craze is not what spurs on Ben Lai, the owner and head baker of Home Croissanterie in Balmain. He laughs when asked whether he will ever do an onigiri croissant, the latest viral croissant corrption that’s shaped like a rice onigiri, filled with savoury things. “At some point you have to put a boundary on how you make things.”

“I am trying to make myself proud, or something like that,” says Lai. “There are always going to be trends. But a lot of bakers are trying to say something, and different philosophies drive what we bake. Different bakeries will showcase their techniques,” says Lai.

Is this the end of our Australian classics, the pink-iced finger buns, meat pies and lamingtons of our childhood? Home Croissanterie’s Lai reassures the fans of old-school. “Food is more than quality and taste. It’s also about memories. Memories can be more important than the thing, it evokes something personal. It’s like instant noodles for me, I know it’s going to kill me, but I am still going to eat it.”

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