For fresh baked bread that crackles and sings to you, check out Pavilion Bakery on Broadway Market. Check out their beautiful storefront and pick up a delicious loaf of sourdough!
For a true east London experience, venture to Broadway Market to buy a loaf of bread from Pavilion Bakery. There are no seats inside, but instead this shop functions as a grab and go to pick up a loaf of bread, a cup of coffee and a sweet pastry. Inside the shop, bread loaves and pastries line the counter and the back wall. Make your selection and the barista wraps it up for you.
The beautiful storefront is reason enough for any bread lover to go to Pavilion Bakery. The striking wood front jumps out when you look down the gentrified street, and the large window that showcases a selection of fresh baked bread draws your eye in. It's a treat just to gawk at the carefully arranged breads through the window.
Pavilion Bakery is located at the south end of Broadway Market. If you want to get the full experience of the market, visit Pavilion Bakery on a Saturday. There, you'll find about 80 stalls selling cheese, meat and fish, cakes, preserves, and fruit and vegetables. The market starts trading 9 AM and runs until about 5 PM. These photos are taken at 10 AM, when it wasn't too crowded, and the fresh baked loaves at Pavilion Bakery were still stacked high in the windows and on the counter.
If you make it to the market, be prepared for hordes of those flat white-drinking, fixie bike-riding, facial hair-sporting, no-poo-practicing trendies. If you haven't heard of the no-poo method, welcome to east London.
I cycled home with a loaf of white sourdough (yes, we live in east London, but I haven't yet converted to the no-poo method), and immediately enjoyed several slices with just salted butter. The bread was divine - crusty and on the outside, but incredibly chewy and flavorful on the inside, with a bit of tang from the sourdough.
The loaf was rather large, so we used the rest to make Welsh rarebit (the new grilled cheese) to serve at brunch with some friends. The recipe for this will be posted soon!
Pavilion Bakery
Address: 18 Broadway Market, London E8 4QJ
Opening hours: Monday - Friday: 7:30 AM - 3 PM (ish); Saturday: 7:30 AM - 5 PM; Sunday 9 AM - 4 PM
Contact: info@pavilion-bakery.com
Shane O'Reilly says
Hey there. So I was wandering around Hackney and Columbia Road Saturday morning looking for a cup of coffee and my wife found a place and I sat down inside with my back to the shop sitting at a longish front ledge with stools facing out a large window and read through the cool cooking/design magazines that were splayed out before me, while she drank her coffee. Now, I am desperate to know if this was your cafe or not because my wife loved it and never wrote the name down. The problem is, from the photos on the internet the picture of the front of the shop, as we imagined it, looks so different. It had one door on the right and a large window front on the left. That's it really. I think. Sorry if this sounds insane - I was just wondering, hoping, perhaps your outside photos haven't been updated and you are the indeed the correct cafe? Thanks for reading.
Tina Jui says
Hi Shane, Pavilion Bakery is located in Broadway Market in Hackney, not Columbia Road, so I'm not sure this is the shop you are looking for! Do you remember where the coffee shop was located?
Shane O'Reilly says
Yeah I was around there as well. Do you have any very recent pictures of the Pavilion Bakery? The ones online seem to be old, a year or two, maybe they have made changed since.
Marcia MacLeod says
Why did you remove my query about the rapeseed oil in brownies? It is a legitimate comment/complaint. I've also put it on Pavilion's Facebook page, but no one has answered me. Brownies should not be made with any oil: it changes the texture so they are no longer oil. Rapeseed oil has a distinctive flavour which changes them even more.
Tina Jui says
Hi Marcia, you can also try to contact Pavilion Bakery on their twitter page. https://twitter.com/pavilionbakery. Hope they get back to you soon.
Marcia MacLeod says
Have tried emailing Pavilion - but it bounced back. I want to know if the brownie I bought yesterday had rapeseed oil in it, which I am 99.9% sure it did, and if so, why? Oil should not be used in brownies: it alters the texture, as well as the taste. It didn't taste like a brownie, and as I can't stand rapeseed oil anyway (yes, it DOES taste - and I spent most of the night nibbling other things to try to get rid of that taste) I threw most of it out.
Mel says
This is my kind of place! I am addicted to bread. Love, love, love it and this bakery sounds like heaven to me. Must make my way to East London!
Tina Jui says
Hi Mel - yes, yes you do! You'll find piles of loaves of bread that are so delicious there.