The best artisanal bakeries in Lisbon
Here in Portugal, we often consume bread with our meals. Bread with butter, jam, cheese and/or ham is a very standard Portuguese breakfast. Sandwiches are our go-to snack mid morning and mid afternoon. And along with lunch or dinner, it’s customary to have a bread basket on top of the table, independently of what’s on your plate as a main.
We have a great variety of regional bread specialities, taking advantage of the cereals that are most prevalent in different parts of the country. In the interior of the northern part of the country, where the soil is drier and tougher for most cultivars, rye has traditionally been the grain of choice. Around here, in the Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro province, pão de centeio, that is, dark and robust rye bread, is almost synonymous with bread altogether. Towards the coast you find broa, a crumbly and dense cornbread that Portugal shares with the neighboring Spanish region of Galicia. As you start going south in Portugal, wheat breads become more prevalent, as this is the main cereal cultivated in the center and southern regions, like in the Alentejo, which we could easily refer to as “Portugal’s bread basket”. Traveling even further to the Portuguese islands, you’ll find more varieties of regional breads, incorporating other ingredients besides grains. A good example of this is bolo do caco, a typical bun from Madeira, that apart from wheat flour also involves sweet potato in its recipe.
Going to the bakery used to be a very common habit in Portugal not that long ago. But in recent decades, the popularization of supermarkets and the generally faster rhythm of life has made us change our bread purchasing habits and end up opting more and more for the baked goods available at bigger chains. While you still come across a good selection of breads at most neighborhood supermarkets, the quality is not always the same.
Thankfully, there’s a new wave of artisanal bakers in Lisbon who are bringing back traditional breads like our grandparents used to enjoy by default. We could say that these new bread artists are innovating but, in reality, they are going back to once again do things the way they used to be done back in the day. The result? More flavorful breads, which are also more nutritious, healthy and that, in many cases, are also more eco-friendly and end up contributing much more to the local economy too.
These are some of the best bakeries around Lisbon:
Gleba
If you’re only going to visit one bakery in Lisbon, make sure it’s Gleba. This bakery is behind the resurgence of sourdough artisan bread in our city. Started by inspiring Diogo Amorim at the young age of 21 years, Gleba is a place where you can buy high-quality slow fermented bread that tastes great and is good for your gut. This is also a business that has highly contributed to keep certain grain producers’ business alive. Diogo and his team use exclusively national cereals and even the other ingredients used for their special loaves, like cheeses, herbs, charcuterie and more, are 100% portuguese.
🍞Try: trigo barbela, that is, the loaf made with wheat of the autochthonous Portuguese Barbela variety, popularized by this bakery in recent years
📍Stores all over Lisbon
Crust
In the same part of the city as the original Gleba above, in the neighborhood of Alcântara, Crust is a newcomer in Lisbon’s sourdough scene but they are quickly becoming popular thanks for their flavorful range of breads and pastries, that include pretty particular specialities not often seen elsewhere, such as for instance vatrushka. We love coming to Crust as the team is super small but always happy to welcome customers with a big smile, and you can literally taste the passion they put into everything they make, whether it’s the sourdough loaves that keep featuring different varieties depending on the day, their super fluffy brioche, or the bagels that taste so good you wouldn’t necessarily need to put some filling prior to eating.
🍞Try: their feta cheese bagel for starters and cube croissant with salted caramel ganache right after, to enjoy the contrast of salty and sweet!
📍Rua Prof. Machado Macedo D lj B, 1300-611 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/crust_padaria
Bike Bakery
Luiz André Alvim started this bakery as a mobile street food business in his native Brazil, and finally found a “permanent” address in the neighborhood of Bica in the heart of Lisbon. Their space is super cute but customers flock to this fairly recent bakery because of the range of savory and sweet breads, that go from traditional wheat loaves to the very brazilian cheesy bread (pão de queijo), as well as the decadent puff pastry cinnamon rolls which are drenched in caramel. Chances are you will need to ride a bike to burn all the calories you’ll ingest from the many temptations on offer at Bike Bakery.
🍞Try: their excellen pão de queijo but don’t forget to ask what’s the daily special, as unusual things such as salt cod brioche have been known to happen around here
📍Rua dos Cordoeiros 14, 1200-128 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/bike_bakery_lisboa
Treego • Sourdough Bakery
Treego stands out as an artisanal bakery that not only crafts delicious baked goods, but that also goes one step further when it comes to the philosophy of their business, deeply rooted in sustainability. Everything baked at Treego is sourdough, vegan and using only organic ingredients. They have a main bakery which they call their headquarters (and which so far is only open to the general public on Friday), located in the address below, but are also present in some of Lisbon’s best outdoor food markets, such as the organic farmers market that takes place every Saturday morning in Príncipe Real, and the Sunday market organized at LX Factory.
🍞Try: their version of broa, which besides the customary corn and wheat also has rye
📍Tv. Henrique Cardoso 80, 1700-282 Lisbon
Massa Mãe – Pão Artesanal
The team behind Massa Mãe bakes bread that “reflects all the changes that they want to see in the world” and we think that’s commendable while also quite bold! Just like Gleba, they also use only 100% Portuguese ingredients. They keep things simple: flour from Portuguese grains, water, sea salt and sourdough starter – this is how the best bread is achieved, giving it enough time for mother nature to perform its fermentation magic. Soft crumb, crunchy crust, perfect taste!
🍞Try: their best seller pão de quatro sementes, made with four different strains of wheat and rye
📍Rua Conde Almoster 92A, 1500-197 Lisbon
www.facebook.com/massamaepaoartesanal
Pão do Pastor
“Bread made like back in the day” is the premise Pão do Pastor lives by. To that they add that their creations are “rustic, made with passion, with no hurries and using mill flours”, which indeed result in a much more flavorful bread which is also deeply aromatic. They do mostly classic wheat loaves, as well as rye and mixed flours (mistura), either plain or with a mix of seeds. On the sweeter side of things they also bake brioche, chocolate bread with cacao nibs, and mixed nuts.
🍞Try: the beetroot and red quinoa bread is visually stunning and has a very special taste too
📍Rua de São Félix 33B, 1200-838 Lisbon
Padaria da Esquina
Unlike the other more independent small businesses mentioned here, Padaria da Esquina has a big name of the local gastronomic scene behind it: chef Vitor Sobral, also known for his several other Lisbon based restaurants like Tasca da Esquina (Rua Domingos Sequeira 41C). Padaria da Esquina is Sobral’s 4 store bakery project, focusing not only on high quality bread but also Portuguese pastries, like pastel de nata, made exclusively with butter (and not margarine like in most other pastry shops). Kudos to their artisanal bread and master baker Mário Rolando who is one of the biggest names of sourdough baking in our country.
🍞Try: Alentejano, one of the most beloved types of wheat breads, perfect for toast, sandwiches or simply with a generous spread of butter.
📍Rua Coelho da Rocha 108, 1350-079 Lisbon
Padaria Terra Pão
Bakery project by chef Marta Figueiredo, behind popular fusion eatery Estrela da Bica (Tv. do Cabral 33). She started baking bread for her own restaurant, after feeling that the quality of bread usually served at restaurants was sub-par. From her initial sourdough experiments for internal consumption to opening Padaria Terra Pão, things just ended up happening in a pretty organic way. This bakery eventually found its home inside the traditional market of Arroios, but doesn’t limit itself to traditional Portuguese recipes when it comes to its freshly baked offerings. Besides purchasing bread, you can also visit to have out of the ordinary sandwiches, highlighting other Portuguese ingredients like artisanal goat butter, sheep cheese from Mértola, or organic quince marmalade made by chef Marta herself.
🍞Try: the naturally leavened pão da casa, their main “home-bread”
📍Mercado de Arroios, Rua Ângela Pinto 40D Loja 8, 1900-221 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/padariaterrapao
micro PADARIA
Cláudia Bicho, the one and only person working at micro PADARIA, used to live in San Francisco and work as a scientist in the field of cellular biology. She left her research career behind to fully immerse herself in the science of bread and dared to open a sourdough bakery in the typical neighborhood of Graça, where residents didn’t initially fully understand why her loaves were more expensive than in the corner store. But as the love and understanding about the benefits of slowly fermented bread grew amongst Lisboners, micro PADARIA managed not only to survive but to eventually become an iconic bakery amongst these new wave of bakeries focusing on slowly fermented breads.
🍞Try: polenta com trigo, a loaf made with a blend of polenta and wheat
📍Rua Angelina Vidal 35A, 1170-122 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/micropadaria
Isco Padaria e Bistro
Bread and wine – this is the concept of Isco, where the bakery and pastry shop side of things turns into a bistro with a selected number of dishes and a tempting wine list after dark. We love that, when you walk into Isco in the very Lisbonite neighborhood of Alvalade, you can see what’s happening inside the kitchen. This place smells wonderfully of freshly baked bread no matter what time of the day you visit, and it’s impossible not to get hungry when you get here! At Isco good bread and good times have become synonyms and that’s pretty evident even from the bakery’s Instagram’s profile description “Bread, Pastries, Wine, Food, Beastie Boys”.
🍞Try: pão de espelta, spelt bread
📍Rua José d’Esaguy 10D, 1700-267 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/iscopaoevinho
Padaria Soares & CO.
This bakery and pastry shop in the area of Estefânia was founded by three friends who despite their young age (they’re all in their early 30s) have gathered quite a lot of experience working in top restaurants across the city. At Soares & CO. they’re all about sourdough bread, with new creations hitting the shelves every single week, as well as pastries with clear French inspiration. Even though they only use Portuguese flour, some of their best sellers aren’t quite that local, including focaccia and baguette a l’ancienne, which we consider to be wonderful additions to the more standard loaves we can usually find in most of the other sourdough bakeries of Lisbon.
🍞Try: wheat with toasted oatmeal and orange zest
📍Rua Joaquim Bonifácio 34 36, 1150-195 Lisbon
Do Beco
This is one of the several Lisbon based bread projects that were born during the quarantine, a (in)famous time for the rise of sourdough love which we hope keeps going strong for a long time to come! Do Beco started as an artisan bakery doing home deliveries of natural leavened bread, in a limited radius around Lisbon. They now have a physical store which operates as a bakery and brunch spot, but their general modus operandi remains the same: they only use stone milled flour and slow fermentation. Do Beco (formerly known as Pão do Beco) focuses on natural breads, focaccia, brioche and cinnamon rolls baked by chef António Mello, who also does home chef services via his brand Boca a Boca.
🍞Try: pão português, a classic Portuguese wheat loaf
📍Rua Passos Manuel 106A, 1150-053 Lisbon
The Millstone Sourdough
The Millstone Sourdough is another project started by chefs turned bakers during the lockdown in 2020. Couple David Jesus e Sandra Freitas started baking specialties during the first lockdown, when restaurants including Michelin starred Belcanto (Rua Serpa Pinto 10A) by chef José Avillez, where David was the popular chef’s right arm, had to close its doors. The expertise that comes from a career alongside Portugal’s most celebrated chef clearly shows on every loaf of sourdough crafted by The Millstone Sourdough, produced with flours milled by Portugal’s most popular miller, Paulino Horta. Even though during the quarantine they started with a home-delivery service only, they now have two stores in Lisbon.
🍞Try: pão de tâmaras e avelãs, dates and hazelnut bread, for the sake of something different!
📍Passeio Adamastor 4B, 1990-071 Lisbon
📍Via do Oriente 5.02 03A, 1990-514 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/the.millstone.sourdough
Pachamama
Unlike the businesses above, Pachamama is not exactly a bakery but instead a brand that produces certified organic and naturally leavened bread which you can find in more than 200 stores around the city. If you want to buy Pachamama’s bread, skip the regular bakery section, as their products are normally kept by the natural and healthy sections of supermarkets, or at fully organic grocery stores. Pachamama’s focus is “organic, healthy and super tasty bread” in a range that comprises 12 different types of bread, including gluten free and high protein low carb varieties.
🍞Try: pão ancestral, sourdough bread that favors spelt and einkorn instead of common wheat
📍Available in selected stores and online:
Marquise da Mobler
Setting itself apart from the other businesses we have explored above, Marquisa da Mobler is not only a bakery, but also a coffee shop and concept store. You could certainly come here to buy excellent quality sourdough bread, but the inviting garden will probably make you feel like ordering a hot beverage and sticking around for a while to enjoy the cozy atmosphere. We’d say to buy the bread to take home and order one of their pastries to try right there. These are not the usual pastries you find at a Portuguese pastelaria. Expect other internationally influenced specialities such as rhubarb and pistachio tart, fastelavnsboller, and lemon poppyseed cake with white chocolate ganache, just to mention a few and hopefully open your curiosity to go try for yourself.
🍞Try: if you like robust loaves, do not miss the rye with raisins and nuts
📍Rua Nova da Piedade 33, 1200-296 Lisbon
www.instagram.com/marquisedamobler
What do you think about the new culture of sourdough bread in Lisbon these days? We’d love to hear from you via Instagram. Please tag @tasteoflisboa! #tasteoflisboa
Continue to explore the world of Portuguese bread with these suggestions:
The 3 national meat sandwiches
Açorda de camarão: recipe for savory bread pudding with prawns
Migas: recipe for Alentejo’s fried bread side dish
Feed your curiosity on Portuguese food culture and Lisbon lifestyle:
What do the Portuguese eat for breakfast?
How to identify an authentic Portuguese Tasca
Petiscos: the most popular Portuguese tapas
10 ways to feel like a local in Lisbon
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