Lannan is Scotland’s most talked about bakery. It’s wrapped around a forever sunlit corner of forever bouji Stockbridge. Inside, displayed in gleaming wooden cabinets as if it were an apothecary run by Willy Wonka himself (which, if Wonka were a 26-year-old self-taught baker from the Borders called Darcie Maher, it is), are the pastries, cakes, breads, buns, tarts, custard slices and cookies of your wildest, most algorithmically constructed dreams.
From 8am come the fabled Lannan croissants, folded, stretched and rolled with unsalted cultured butter from Edinburgh Butter Co over three days, glossy as chestnuts, shaped like soft-edged diamonds, each one a Viennese choral hymn to the centuries-old art of lamination. So I’ve heard. I’ve not seen one in the flesh — they’re usually gone by 9am. But I’ve looked at them, more than a person should look at a croissant, on Instagram, countless times. After the pastries come the cakes, jambon-beurre and so on. At 4pm, unless they sell out earlier, the doors close on another day at what I can confirm is the best bakery in Scotland.
So when to go? As a mother of small children I’m never going to make it for the croissants. The morning queues at Lannan since it opened last summer can be so long they’ve led to news stories, Reddit threads, a write-up in The New York Times, and — I’m not joking — grown-ass tantrums. To fly into an abusive rage over not being rewarded with a croissant for standing (although I believe some bring camping chairs) on a peaceful Stockbridge street while world affairs unfold is the definition of entitlement. People need to take a long hard look at themselves if this is what enrages them.
Anyway, this is why I’ve been biding my time, waiting until the hype dies down. My beloved six-year-old and I decide to home in on the jambon-beurre window, and head to Lannan for Thursday, 11am. Jackpot! No queue (or croissants), the sunlight is hitting the red tulips along the wooden window seat — which is free! — just so, the cabinet is filled with freshly replenished riches, and the world and its medjool date and panela butterscotch buns are ours.
Those buns. Described by our server — who, like everyone at Lannan, is warm, knowledgeable and seriously enthused about pastry — as “a handheld sticky toffee pudding”, their painterly swirls rest in an only just setting butterscotch syrup made from panela, an unrefined cane sugar from Latin America. All the caramel notes are here, singing lustily. Meanwhile, through an open window in which boxes of lemons, fennel and eggs are stacked I watch a young baker bent over long, thin ribbons of dough, plaiting the next round.
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Everything is flawless, the best, all the superlatives you can stomach. A chipotle sausage roll has crumbly brick-hued sausage meat and nuts encased in the flakiest, shiniest pastry known to Paris, thin like vieux papier. Flakes of it rain down on the exquisite terracotta-tiled floor as we eat, gobbled up by a cavalcade of equally exquisite dogs. There are many canine visitors to Lannan, all of whom are as well turned out as their owners.
Jambon-beurre comes in an outstanding baguette. So chewy it’s a workout for the jaw, it’s made with Lannan’s own stoneground flour milled by Wild Farmed, which grows wheat using regenerative farming methods, and stuffed with wafer-thin cooked ham, cornichons, Pommery wholegrain mustard and salted cultured butter. So seemingly simple, so hard to get this right. A slice of Lannan’s signature chocolate, buttermilk and rye loaf, inspired by a sponge Maher made in childhood, is rich, tangy and unbelievably moist. Today’s seasonal cake is an almond sponge soaked in noyaux, a syrup made with apricot kernels, which infuses the cake with a complex bouquet of almonds, vanilla and lilies. Atop, a whipped custard so light I never want to eat buttercream again, and a gleaming puddle of stewed rhubarb compote, tart and coral pink. I can think of no better way to celebrate the arrival of spring than this.
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Coffee, roasted by Obadiah in nearby Abbeyhill, is exquisite. A big wonky slice of pala romana — a traditional Roman flatbread — comes topped with very thin, earthy slices of potato and flurries of finely grated cheese. The cookies, particularly the white chocolate and sour cherry, are the best we’ve eaten. So too is a kimchi and Mull cheddar Danish, its crisp pastry bottom studded with sesame seeds. I appreciate this is all getting a bit one-note, but once in a blue moon criticism is objectively impossible. Even my daughter starts shouting: “IT’S THE BEST I’VE EVER HAD.” Which, if I had to boil this already syrupy review down to its essence, is what it would say.
Maher comes from the Palmerston, another of Edinburgh’s finest. It has been her lifelong dream to open her own bakery. I find it astonishing, and laudable, that she is self-taught, so precise, beautiful and grounded in classic French technique are her creations. Each one is a work of art. In Gaelic Lannan means “house”, and this is exactly how Maher’s bakery feels. Like the most warm, nostalgic dream home into which you have had the great fortune of being invited.
@chitgrrlwriter
Lannan Bakery, 29-35 Hamilton Place, @lannanbakery
How it rated
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Food 10
Service 10
Atmosphere 10
We ate
Medjool date and panela butterscotch, £4.50
Chipotle sausage roll, £6
Jambon-beurre, £7
Chocolate, buttermilk and rye loaf, £4.50
Almond, rhubarb and custard cake, £5
Pala romana, potato, taleggio, £6.50
White chocolate, sour cherry cookie, £3
Triple chocolate cookie, £3
Kimchi and Mull cheddar Danish, £4.50
We drank
2 flat whites, £7.20
