Each year, we ask Orange County Register readers to choose their favorite places to shop, dine, play and do business in OC.
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Here are the top picks for Best bakery:
1. Scratch Bakery Café
Laguna Hills, Newport Beach; 949-859-2253; 949-524-8200; scratchbakerycafe.com
Whether inventing delightful takes on favorites, turning bakery “mistakes” into surprising best sellers, or producing sweet and/or savory gems, Scratch Bakery earns high grades.
The name tells you what you need to know about preparation.
‘We bake handmade breads fresh every day, the way bread has been made for centuries in Europe,” the company says.
On the sweet side, the bakery’s Knock Knocks are a Scratch original.
“It came from a take on a Ding Dong,” says CEO and co-founder Ronnie Givargis. “It started as a joke and turned into a real favorite.”
The pastry consists of moist cake filled with buttercream and dipped in chocolate, with seasonal flavors such as red velvet or bananas Foster.
A recent creation, confetti cake, takes a page from the viral dot cake craze, Givargis recently announced, “the newest addition to our Knock Knock family. Confetti cake filled with buttercream, dipped in white chocolate, and covered in rainbow nonpareils.”
For fans of the savory side, Manna Buns are another favorite. Described by Givargis as “an English muffin gone wrong,” the buns are light, airy and corn meal crusted and an ideal companion to breakfast foods.
Orders can be made online and lines begin queuing about 7 a.m. daily.
Although its roots are in baking, Scratch has a strong following among dine-in patrons for breakfast and lunch.
“We started as a bakery, but now a good portion of our sales is food,” Givargis said.
2. Porto’s Bakery and Café
7640 Beach Blvd., Buena Park; 714-367-2030; portosbakery.com
It’s all about the balance between the old favorites and finding new and exciting flavors that keeps Porto’s Bakery and Cafe on both the cutting edge and steeped in Old World tradition.
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It is also about never resting on laurels.
“You don’t take it for granted,” said Betty Porto, who came to the U.S with her family from Cuba and is the owner of the six eponymous bakery-restaurants. “It’s a labor of love.”
According to Porto, that means honoring Momma Rosa Porto’s family favorites from personal and generations-old Spanish Galician recipes, such as her famous Papa Rellenas, potato balls, and guava strudel, as well as consistently changing and adding “beautiful seasonal items, like fruit mousses and torts.
Porto’s also delivers Bake at Home kits with recipes and instructions.
“What drives us is the customer and keeping them satisfied,” Porto said. “They’re the bosses.”
Besides its Buena Park location, Porto’s has bakeries in Burbank, Downey, Glendale, Northridge and West Covina. A second Orange County bakery is currently under construction at Downtown Disney.
3. Katella Bakery Deli Restaurant
4470 Katella Ave., Los Alamitos; 562-594-8611; katellabakery.com
For more than 50 years, Katella Bakery Deli Restaurant has been a treasure tucked away in Los Alamitos. Although known for pastrami-piled-high sandwiches, homemade latkes and other traditional deli favorites, Katella Bakery Deli Restaurant also gains high marks for the bakery side of the business, where the restaurant website proclaims the goods are “baked the same way, every day.”
With dozens of varieties of torts, cakes, cheesecakes, cookies, cupcakes, Danishes and pastries, Katella answers the call of just about any sweet tooth.
The bakers are also known for offering up a wide array of muffins, bagels, breads and rolls.
According to the restaurant, “Our bakery remains rooted in tradition. Fresh rye bread, challah, cakes, and pastries are baked in-house daily, just as they always have been.”
Meanwhile, the restaurant retains deli authenticity with “recipes that have been handed down through our family.”
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