Compared with other big cities, the average quality of bread and breakfast pastries in Vienna is very solid but I highlighted below a handful of bakeries that are especially dedicated to excellence. Local specialties include the wonderful salty sticks (Stangerln), concoctions layered with walnuts or poppy-seeds, filled donuts (Krapfen), and Vienna’s most well-known export, the Kaiser roll.
Ströck is a city-wide chain of bakeries, most of them the reliable workhorse type, but I’m here to highlight their Burggasse shop whose croissants have no equal in Vienna. Freshly made throughout the day, tender and flaky, but also rich and elastic and enclosed in a shiny glaze. Other treats, too, exist – wonderful rolls, Stangerln (bread sticks), breakfast pastries – and a spacious and comfortable dining area where egg-based breakfasts are served. All this inside Vienna’s most fashionable neighborhood in District 7.