One of London’s best-known bakeries is heading to Harpenden. Bread Ahead, the bakery that made its name with its doughnuts at Borough Market, is opening at 92–94 High Street on Monday 12 October 2026. It will be the company’s first bakery outside London, and the building it is moving into has an interesting recent history of its own.

What to expect at Bread Ahead Harpenden

The new bakery takes up around 2,500 sq ft across two floors. Downstairs there will be a bakery counter and an all-day café, serving Bread Ahead’s sourdough and breads, pastries and doughnuts alongside breakfast, brunch, lunch and coffee. Opening hours are reported as 7am to 6pm.

Upstairs, a dedicated classroom will host baking workshops and private hire, with classes due to start in January 2027. Before then, the team plans community events and children’s baking activities during the October half term.

Harpenden is also the first bakery under Bread Ahead’s new owner-operator model, which lets long-standing members of the team take on ownership of their own bakery, with a stake in the business. The Harpenden bakery will be run by one of those long-serving team members. Founder Matthew Jones said: “If someone has the talent, determination and ambition to run their own bakery, I want us to give them that opportunity.”

From Borough Market to the High Street

Bread Ahead was founded in 2013 by Matthew Jones, a baker who had spent around 15 years working in Michelin-starred restaurant kitchens. He opened the first bakery at Borough Market in Southwark, one of London’s oldest and best-known food markets, and its doughnuts quickly became one of the market’s most photographed treats, with queues to match.

A baking school followed in 2014, teaching everything from sourdough to doughnuts. It became a lifeline during the pandemic, when Bread Ahead ran free daily live baking lessons on Instagram. Matthew Jones has also written two cookbooks: Baking School: The Bread Ahead Cookbook (2017) and Bread Ahead: The Expert Home Baker (2021).

The business has since grown to several London sites, including King’s Cross, South Kensington and Wembley, as well as bakeries abroad in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Thailand and the Philippines. It describes itself as still independent.

Its original home is now uncertain. In September 2026 it was reported that Borough Market would not renew Bread Ahead’s lease after 13 years, citing the company’s growth and international expansion. Matthew Jones said he “never imagined that being successful could put our home at risk”, while Borough Market said its relationships with traders, past and present, remain important to it. At the time of writing, talks between the two were reported to be continuing.

The story of 92–94 High Street

Bread Ahead’s new home is a double-fronted shop on the High Street that many Harpenden residents will remember from its previous lives.

For many years it was home to Jacksons, the bathroom and plumbing merchant, which had been trading on Harpenden High Street for 29 years. Its closure was announced in the summer of 2017, much to the dismay of many local customers.

That same year a new business, Barbarello, was set up at 92–94 High Street as a licensed restaurant and wine bar, occupying the full width of both shop units. It was short-lived: the Harpenden Society later noted that it stayed open for only a month or two, putting its closure down to over-optimistic expectations of demand. The company behind it was formally dissolved in March 2023.

Since then the premises have been advertised to let, and now the building is about to get a new lease of life, and a very different one, with ovens, a café and a baking classroom upstairs.

Visiting

• Address: 92–94 High Street, Harpenden, AL5 2SP
• Opens: Monday 12 October 2026
• Hours: reported as 7am to 6pm
• Baking classes: from January 2027

Looking for more places to start the day? See our guides to breakfast in Harpenden and cafés in Harpenden.

Opening details are based on Bread Ahead’s announcement and press coverage at the time of writing and may change. We will update this article once the bakery opens.