Where to Grab the Best Bread in the DC Area

We’ve been on an intense, carb-heavy journey throughout the area to find the top bread loaves this region has to offer. Here are the best you can find. (Trust us—we tried dozens.)

Cranberry-Walnut

Bread Alley

Bread Alley, which makes the bread for the ever-expanding Stephen Starr restaurant empire, still somehow feels like a secret thanks to its minuscule location in, yes, an alley. All the breads are fantastic, but the cranberry-walnut is unmissable thanks to the aggressive (in a good way) distribution of nuts. The dark and craggy crust juxtaposes beautifully with the cranberries’ sweetness.

Milk Bread

Saku Saku Flakerie

This Japanese-French bakery is known for its pastries and sweets (we’re partial to the marble tahini cookie), but the brioche-like milk bread is the sleeper hit. It’s bouncy, airy, and buttery. Plus, it’s fantastic with jam or egg salad and cucumbers.

Baguette

Elle

Mount Pleasant darling Ellē gets everything right here: Its baguette is crunchy on the outside and soft inside. But it’s the slight sourdough taste that separates this baguette from all the others. It doesn’t even need butter.

Pita

Yellow

Is there ever not a line at Michael Rafidi’s Georgetown and Union Market cafes? We get it: The pita with za’atar and garlic oil is ploofy, chewy, and substantial without being dense. If you want to snag a six-pack (and you do), order early—it often sells out toward the end of the day.

Sourdough

Manifest Bread

Manifest opened its storefront in 2023 and was an immediate hit with both DC bread lovers and fine-dining restaurants. As of press time, it’s about to reopen with a bigger space, where you’ll find the same faultless sourdough—made with house-milled flour from local grains—that people routinely line up for. Snag a ginger molasses cookie, too.

Einkorn

Seylou

This Shaw bakery, which mills its own flour and bakes its breads in a wood-fired oven, puts out a loaf made from einkorn (an ancient grain) that’s welcomingly springy and tangy. The lovely crust shows force but won’t cut your gums. We especially love it with labneh.

Sangak

Stone Bakery

Step into this nondescript bakery and find a rotating oven churning out this delightfully chewy, sesame-flecked Persian flatbread. Don’t be intimidated by the sheaf-like size—it’s easy to slice and freeze. Grab some of the puffier barbari as well.

Olive Levain

Bread Furst

Mark Furstenberg’s Van Ness bakery/cafe is a DC classic. While many of its loaves are great, its crusty levain generously studded with olives particularly shines.

Wurzelbrot Rustic

The Swiss Bakery

It’s all about the aesthetics here. Wurzel means root in German—thus, this is bread in the form of a knotty tree root. Serve it on a platter at brunch, and enjoy both the oohs and aahs and the nice texture from the mix of sunflower, sesame, flax, and rye sprinkled on the crust.

This article appears in the June 2025 issue of Washingtonian.

Carey Polis