The 17 Athens Bakeries Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Pastry chef Alexandros Koniaris is behind one of Athens’ most talked-about bakeries, in a Koukaki address where daytime baking and evening dining belong to the same house. Morning is when the pastry counter does its work: sourdough plates, buttery buns, cookies, croissants, and sweets with a contemporary hand. The gianduja croissant is flaky and generous, the caramelized chocolate brioche has depth, and the miso white chocolate cookie shows why pastry chefs have become Athens’ new morning stars.

Anastasiou Zinni 34, Koukaki

This fully vegan bakehouse in Syntagma brings plant-based pastry into the same conversation as the city’s butter-led bakeries. The team works without animal products, building its display around puffy croissant doughs, cruffins, buns, cakes, brunch plates, sandwiches, juices, smoothies, and organic coffee. The pistachio wonder wheel is the signature order, with flaky pastry and rich pistachio cream showing how far vegan technique has moved.

Nikis 23, Syntagma

Consultant pastry chef Lisa Kermanidou brings experience from London’s Pantechnicon to this Pangrati bakery, with French flour, Normandy butter, and a playful approach to familiar Greek comforts. Her croissant filled with rice pudding and salted caramel is a good place to start; the savory counter answers with pistachio cream, stracciatella, and mortadella. Even the chocolate croissant takes a different route, with brownie tucked into the dough in place of the usual chocolate sticks. The breads are sourdough, and croissant trimmings find a second life in sticky cinnamon rolls. Leave room for her flasque, a meeting of custard flan and Basque cheesecake.

Imittou 225, Pangrati

Pastry chef Alexandros Koufas, known from the Hotel Grande Bretagne and King George, brings his French repertoire to this elegant address beside Klafthmonos Square. Butter croissants and pain au chocolat make an easy breakfast, but the counter rewards a longer look: his Fleur de Noisetier layers hazelnut biscuit, praline cream, and chocolate-hazelnut mousse into a small, elaborate pleasure. Bread gets equal attention, including sourdough loaves and fougasse, the leaf-shaped Provençal bread, with fillings such as olives or feta. Come for coffee and something freshly baked, or take a baguette sandwich into the city; by evening, the room becomes a French bistro.

Dragatsaniou 6, Athens

Pavlos Tsiolekas brought experience from Papaspyrou, Samba, and the restaurant Soil to this small Pangrati bakery, where Scandinavian references meet the warmth of an open pastry kitchen. The name is Danish for “mature,” an apt introduction to doughs given time to develop and bakes made in small batches. Sourdough tsoureki, the Greek sweet bread scented with mahlepi, mastic, and orange, makes a particularly good introduction to his work. Chocolate babka, cardamom buns, cinnamon rolls, and seasonal fruit tarts broaden the choice. It is the kind of counter to revisit: a familiar favorite on one visit, something newly in season on the next.

Pratinou 53 & Amaseias 6, Pangrati

Head pastry chef Antonis Prasinos gives this compact downtown bakery its technical signature, after a two-year development period built around pastry and cinnamon rolls. Rolls are shaped, brushed, baked, glazed, and served warm through a street window, with classic sugar-dusted or abundantly glazed versions beside tiramisu, lemon blueberry, apple crumble, minis, and a rich pistachio roll that has already gathered its own following.

Evripidou 9, Athens

Founded by pastry chefs Alkis Zervas, Ioannis Kikiras, and Spyros Pappas, this croissanterie helped make laminated pastry a citywide obsession, and has since grown to around a dozen locations across Greece and Cyprus. The expansion hasn’t erased the founding idea: French-style croissants as a standalone subject, with butter, folding, fermentation, baking, and filling treated as the main event. Pistachio brings dense nut flavor, cheesecake with red fruits moves toward restaurant dessert territory, and the limited pulled pork collaboration with Starlight Burgers showed how far the croissant can travel between breakfast, pastry, and savory street food.

Praxitelous 27, Athens

Co-founded by Maria Alafouzou and pastry chef-baker Ianthi Michalaki, this Kolonaki bakery helped shift Athens toward long fermentation, sourdough, and serious viennoiserie, and now has a second address in Filothei’s historic Petrino kiosk. Michalaki’s background includes work in Copenhagen, and that northern European baking discipline is visible in the use of time, butter, grain, and fermentation. The pain au chocolat with Valrhona is crisp, with a rich chocolate filling, while savory pastries such as spianata, cheddar, and potato show how the same laminated base can move from breakfast to a satisfying savory bite.

Anagnostopoulou 44, Kolonaki

This chic French family bakery (empire), established in 1889, brings the pleasures of a classic boulangerie to Panepistimiou, within easy walking distance of Syntagma. Golden butter croissants and pain au chocolat remain the straightforward morning orders, while country sourdough and a loaf with dried apricots, raisins, and hazelnuts give the bread shelves their own appeal. For a more substantial pause, the croque monsieur layers ham, Emmental, and béchamel over toasted sourdough; its croque madame counterpart adds a fried egg. It is an easy place to turn a coffee stop into breakfast before setting off through central Athens.

Panepistimiou 10, Syntagma

Pastry chef Yiannis Vlasiou and baker Dimitris Dritsas built this croissanterie around butter, dough, and a focused counter, first in Piraeus and, more recently, with a second address in central Athens. The formula is direct and demanding: French butter with 84% fat, Greek nuts, Callebaut chocolate, and a short list of viennoiserie made with visible craft. Croissants, cinnamon rolls, and puff pastry braids with cinnamon are displayed on marble like finished objects, but the real story is technical. Laminated pastry here is treated as a discipline, with flavor coming through fat, fold, bake, and filling.

Athanasiou Axarlian 2, Syntagma

Brothers Thomas and George Douzis, the founders of Ergon, put bread at the heart of their Athens Bake House, with 72H occupying the ground floor. The name refers to the long fermentation of its sourdough, giving the loaves time to develop flavor before they reach the counter. Chocolate babka, cardamom buns, and cinnamon rolls offer sweeter reasons to stop at the corner of Mitropoleos and Patroou. There is more here than a takeaway pastry: the adjoining eatery builds sandwiches and toasts around the bakery’s bread. Pick up something for the walk ahead, or settle in and make breakfast the first event of the day.

Mitropoleos 27 & Patroou 9-11, Athens

Founder Nikolaos Karagiorgos created an Ilisia bakery with a French-inspired artisan base and a strong bread reputation, but the pastry work deserves equal attention. The team uses high-quality ingredients, including Breton butter, free-range eggs, and natural sourdough starter, bringing technique into everyday neighborhood baking. The croissants are light, buttery, and properly layered, while the ham and cheese pie with airy pastry and tomato sauce shows the same approach applied to a Greek savory classic.

Papadiamantopoulou 30, Ilisia

Swedish-born Anne Meurling, who grew up near Uppsala, brought Scandinavian baking to the border between Neapoli and Exarchia. After training with Danish baker Jesper Goetz, a Noma alumnus, she opened Hygge inside a former family-run bakery with roots in the 1960s. The counter works through Nordic comfort with an artisan hand: sourdough loaves, cinnamon buns, cardamom buns, cookies, Swedish sweets, sandwiches, coffee, and the house’s Scandi koulouri. Head baker Emmanouela Delatola runs the kitchen day to day.

Ippokratous 192, Neapoli-Exarchia

German brothers Cedric and Christopher von Halem, grandsons of the Danish designer Verner Panton, moved to Athens and built this Kolonaki bakery around the German bread they grew up eating and couldn’t find in Greece. Baker Johannes Guertner, from a fourth-generation baking family, and Florian Messerer round out the project, with organic flour imported from a small Bavarian mill and sourdough loaves left to rest for up to 80 hours. Rye with roasted seeds, spelt rolls with fig or olive, and rustic baguettes sit alongside the pretzels that have already become the signature order, their crust glossy, their crumb properly elastic. The open glass bakery lets customers watch the whole process, while furniture by their Danish grandfather, Verner Panton, adds a personal touch to this Bavarian bakery.

Milioni 12, Kolonaki

This one-man operation from Michalis Bias, previously of Agia Paraskevi’s slow-fermentation bakery Tsofli, keeps things deliberately small: a handful of products made fresh each day rather than a full case of options. The daily savory tart changes constantly, stuffed focaccias and sourdough cinnamon rolls sell out early, and madeleines arrive in rotating apricot, chocolate, or lemon-lavender versions. The clear standout is a tyropita kourou built on French butter and PDO feta from a small producer, a Greek classic given the same technical attention as the bakery’s French-leaning pastries.

Veikou 27-29, Koukaki

Athina Skouvaki, a Koukaki native who spent years in Australia and London, returned to the neighborhood she grew up in to open the bakery she always wished existed there. The name takes its cue from Ted, her dog, whose wagging tail became the shop’s unofficial mascot. Recipes by Panagiotis Tsiafos range from peynirli, boat-shaped savory pastries, with egg and handmade tomato sauce to hazelnut praline babka, cinnamon rolls in both classic and vegan peanut butter versions, and a Danish brioche with pastry cream and raspberry. Coffee comes from Area 51, with matcha and juices from Yum Tales rounding out the counter.

Falirou 36, Koukaki

We usually keep visitors closer to the center, but Pericles Vourthis’ meticulous approach to fermentation makes Bread B.C. in suburban Chalandri worth the detour. What began with experiments at home and journeys to learn from bakers abroad now produces naturally leavened loaves and a pastry counter with an inventive streak, from French butter croissants to a bougatsa-inspired version filled with anise-scented custard. Know to ask for the made-to-order grilled cheese: gouda, cheddar, and prosciutto cotto between slices of house sourdough, grilled on cast iron until golden, with enough melted cheese to make an American homesick. Celebrations bring slow-fermented panettone, almond-filled galette des rois, and Greek honey cookies. This is not just über-polished suburbia baking, but a bakery with an international outlook and a devoted following among the digital media crowd based here. For anyone who plans a morning around good bread, it warrants a trip beyond the center.

Agias Paraskevis 59, Chalandri

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