At first glance, with its white marble, gold trim, and script fonts, Artisserie threatens to be more interested in Francophilia than a genuine fluency with flour and butter. However, one bite of a face-sized palmier will set the record straight. They shatter like phyllo dough, and dissolve into an amber caramel heavily dosed with Real. Deal. Beurre. Glistening fruit tarts, cherry chocolate “pearls,” and a “praline jewel” are a bit precious, though tasty enough. Macarons and choquette (cream puffs), however, are clunkily overstuffed. Which makes the visibly weighted down raspberry croissant a conundrum. Red-striped, berry-powder-dusted, and loaded with no less than half a cup of bright jam and silky pastry cream, it should be a gluttonous mess. I’ll spoil the plot for you: sometimes more is more. —Matthew Trueherz

A Francophile’s wonderland, with the butter to back it up

One reason to get up on weekend mornings: Berlu Bakery’s traditional and contemporary Vietnamese pastries and soups. The Vietnamese tasting menu restaurant is on an indefinite hiatus as chef Vince Nguyen adjusts to new parenthood. So the weekend-only bakery is currently the only way to eat the James Beard Award–winner’s food. I’m a fool for the bánh bò nướng, a pandan-fragrant honeycomb cake with an exquisitely chewy texture. Nguyen’s salty-sweet coconut egg custard tart leans, fantastically, into the savory zone, topped with a grating of salted egg yolk. Expect eight to 10 dishes and treats per week, from elegant kiwi roll cakes to medallion-like mooncakes to two rotating Vietnamese soups (one vegan)—all dairy-free and celiac-safe. Make life easy: just order the “everything box.” —Karen Brooks

Home of bánh bò nướng, the neon-green, Vietnamese sponge cake

Next door to the acclaimed restaurant Coquine, this sweet little chef-driven bakery and market opened in 2021 with its own barista and morning pastry bar that stacks its wares whimsically tall on pie plates. Come for sweet and savory scones that announce the season, from persimmons to huckleberries, exemplary waffles handed over in paper jackets, or arm-length jalapeno-cheddar breadsticks. And above all, the smoky almond and chocolate chip cookies are epic as ever. —KB

Two words: Coquine cookie

When it opened in 2008, this SE bakery was dubbed the church of heavenly bread. Founder Tim Healea passed the reigns to longtime head baker Dillon DeBauche in 2023, prompting a minor facelift and a doubling down on all things grain nerd. Bread remains the star, from righteous spelt loaves to snappy “long skinny” baguettes. I ride with the Sally Lunn, a pale-yellow beauty with a rich and buttery crumb. It’s the best sandwich bread you’ll find. Alas, the pastries are fine, but less than saintly: the laminated dough has no shatter, no swagger, but the croissants will do in a pinch. Keep your eyes on the bread. DeBauche spent years in research and development at Camas Country Mills, the Junction City mill that grinds your favorite bakers’ favorite grains, and it shows. —KB

All bow to the flourless chocolate chip walnut cookie

Marius Pop has his own pastry aesthetic: light and a little French-modern, presented in a pastry case that looks like a fashion runway. Nuvrei (pronounced noo-vray) was a groundbreaker when it opened in 2008. It’s since settled in as a dependable spot for a quality treat, such as a bittersweet, custardy cannelle, or a poppyseed scone bound in crackling glaze. Croissants glow in classic form and also come sliced and diced, glazed, stuffed, and twice baked with any addition you could imagine. The chocolate cookie is wonderfully crippling—no flour, minimal sugar, just all dark chocolate, walnut-chunked intensity, with a mesmerizing chew and the rich wallop of a brownie. —KB

All bow to the flourless chocolate chip walnut cookie

Newly reopened in Sellwood after three years in a teeny Montavilla storefront, this family-run Sicilian bakery and deli rests on the holy trinity of nana-worthy cannoli, sesame-crusted muffuletta sandwiches, and every variety of dainty Italian cookie under the sun. The delicate, blistery cannoli are a revelation of crunch and fresh ricotta, filled to order to preserve the crisp shell. Cuccidati (shortbread cookies rolled with fig jam and topped with rainbow sprinkles) are a favorite, as are cakey tricolor “cookies” stacked with house marmellata. And who else in town is baking their own muffuletta bread, let alone serving a vegetarian eggplant option? —MT

The city’s most lovingly prepared cannoli

By night, Café Olli serves some of the best pizza in the city and an Italian-leaning dinner menu that takes full advantage of a world-class bread program. The Every Day Loaf, Portland Monthly’s favorite sourdough in town, is reason enough to come here. When the sun’s up, look out for Portuguese pastéis de nata, which are delicate little tarts with a pleasantly bitter, oven-burnished custard filling. And don’t leave without one of the city’s best chocolate chip cookies: salty, with a gooey middle and crisp, buttery edges. After endless pleas from customers, they’re a mainstay of the restaurant’s dessert menu. The laminated pastries also delight, including a formidable chocolate croissant and a tragically fleeting series of seasonal Danishes—I’m still thinking about a pear and pistachio one from last fall. —MT

For a balanced breakfast of bread and cookies

Respect. This spacious bakery helped jump-start Portland’s artisan food culture way back in 2001, when bread and pizza master Ken Forkish brought serious French baking to a squooshy bagel town, paving the way for today’s flourishing bread-baking community. Forkish sold the business to longtime employees in late 2021. Rustic breads remain first-rate, toasted walnut to the vaunted boule. And though Ken’s no longer represents the city’s pastry vanguard, the iconic orange zested morning bun still holds its own. Long live the twisty, crispy goat cheese and leek croissant—best reheated for an extra toast. —KB

Ground zero of the PDX artisanal bakery scene

Chances are, any Portland restaurant serving shokupan, the feather-light Japanese milk bread, buys it from Oyatsupan. If you haven’t tried it, the egg salad sandwich is worthy of any Tokyo convenience store. Milk bread aside, the commercial-scale bakery’s menu runs very long: honeyed castella cake, pound cake’s cloud-like cousin, shares shelves with a range of cookie-crusted “pan” buns (chocolate, matcha, melon, red bean—any is a foolproof starting point). Spiraled, bready pastry cones called cornets come with either chocolate or vanilla custard centers and a set of googly eyes. —MT 

Beaverton’s portal to Tokyo

This mecca of earthy-crunchy sourdough with an undying love for hearty grains now sits in a brand-new location on SE Belmont, a ways away from its eponymous volcano. Longtime employee Rebecca Tosdevin took over last year, and despite the change of scenery, the spirit of the place—and, we assume, its fermentation mothers—are well intact. The menu’s guiding question is, Can you sourdough that? Most of the extensive bread and pastry list benefits from the funk, especially those with backbone, like the sweet tangy chocolate babka, and the rough-and-tumble Einkorn wheat loaf. If you appreciate a nice zing, the chocolate croissant is like no other, but not for the faint of heart. If sourdoughification isn’t your jam, local grains take on the mantle, like rye in the brownies (totally works) and buckwheat in the chocolate chip cookies (not so much). —MT

The sourdough capital of Oregon

Julie Richardson’s bakery hasn’t lost the shine that made it a farmers market star back in 1998. Chocolate crinkle cookies are gooey as ever, berry hand pies endure as fruit-filled wonders, and the nutty, savory, and sprinkled-with-everything-seasoning whole wheat croissant remains anything but a dull, “healthy” treat. The chocolate croissant is one of the city’s best, with a tangy, bittersweet chocolate center that contrasts the crisp-edged dough’s pronounced butter flavor. Above all is the signature Katie Bun. This morning bun fashioned from croissant dough is a brown-sugar-cinnamon-swirled dream, dotted with chewy golden raisins and dusted with powdered sugar. —MT

Home of the Katie Bun, a morning bun made from croissant dough

Should you go for a plain croissant, with its quietly confident, countryside crust, or an elegantly crackling chocolate one, filled with a bespoke blend from Woodblock Chocolate? Picking either would mean missing the city’s best almond croissant, oozing with the distinctly expensive flavor of high-quality almond paste. And that’s all before the berry tarts and seasonal hand pies, not to mention the killer burnt Basque cheesecake, whole or by the slice. James Beard–medaled cookbook author and grain-baking pioneer Kim Boyce puts beautiful flour front and center, Rouge de Bordeaux to rye, milling some by hand per batch. Though Bakeshop could easily shift into cruise mode, the bakery endures as a national gem more than 10 years in. —KB

The reigning almond croissant champ

Born in Seoul and trained under Las Vegas’s French pastry gods, Jin Caldwell and Kyurim Lee ditched Sin City for Stumptown in 2018. But their unassuming shop overflows with ritzy pastries. Walk in and pick from an outsize collection: mondo croissants warm from the oven each morning (classic butter to crispy ham and cheese), intricate savory tarts, and jewel-toned desserts in miniature. Specials include the “Q’een Amman,” in which Lee (known as “Q”) puts Nutella where the gods intended: on top of a classic kouign-amann pastry. And then there’s the elusive pain suisse, a pastry cream–folded croissant dotted with chocolate chips: it’s outrageous and bodacious, and shows up on the menu when it pleases. —KB

Mondo croissants with Vegas flair

It’s all in the name. If you’re after a dizzying croissant, proud and regal with layers stacked as precisely as the pages of a book, this is your spot—and there are two locations in town. Chocolate croissants wear a handsome swirl of coco dough and a sumptuous glaze. A rose-scented cruffin (croissant + muffin), fat with raspberry jam and rich custard, is said to have started the whole operation: it’s a mesmerizing twist of gossamer layers, crusty with a white-sugar coat, like the world’s lightest jelly doughnut. To make way for their impressive posture, the laminated pastries here tend to lack ever so slightly in softness and butter flavor; even still, the lookers are well worth a detour. —MT

Your new muse: the raspberry and custard cruffin