10 Central Texas Bakeries to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth

Start here, because everyone in New Braunfels does. Naegelin’s opened in 1868, when an Alsatian immigrant named Edouard Naegelin arrived in town with a sack of flour and less than a dollar to his name. More than 150 years later it holds the title of the oldest continuously operating bakery in Texas — and it has trademarked the phrase to prove it. The floors still creak, the recipes still date to the 1800s, and the Granzin family has kept the whole thing running since 1980.

What you come for depends on your loyalties. Regulars swear by the apple strudel, made from a recipe that hasn’t changed in a century. Kids — and plenty of adults — come for the iconic “Happy Face” cookies, simple shortbread rounds with a smiley face that the bakery sells by the hundreds every day. There are German specialties you’ll struggle to find anywhere else in the state, like Lebkuchen and springerle, plus kolaches, cakes, and enough fresh bread to perfume the whole block. It’s not fancy. That’s the point.

If Naegelin’s is New Braunfels’ past, 2tarts is its present. Sisters April Ryan and Ashley Landerman opened this from-scratch bakery and café in the heart of downtown in 2010, and it has since become one of the most decorated small businesses in town. Ashley is a two-time Food Network champion — she won the Christmas Cookie Challenge in 2019 and the Holiday Baking Championship in 2023 — and the sisters were together named New Braunfels Small Business Persons of the Year in 2020.

The accolades are nice, but the reason people keep coming back is the case: cream puffs, éclairs, macarons, seasonal scones, layer cakes that get requested for every wedding in the county, and a coffee bar to go with them. It’s open late for a bakery — a deliberate choice to give downtown a place where neighbors run into each other. And if one sweet stop isn’t enough, the same family runs Scoop Street, a craft ice cream shop churning small-batch flavors in-house, just around the corner on West San Antonio Street — Ashley and her husband Pete are behind that one. Make it a two-stop afternoon.

Right on Fredericksburg’s Main Street, in the middle of the most German town in Texas, sits the place the line forms outside of by mid-morning. Old German Bakery & Restaurant has been going since 1975, and since 1998 it’s been run by Lutz Henschel — a German-trained baker who spent two decades at the craft before taking the place over. Everything is made from scratch using traditional recipes, and the decor leans full Old-World Berlin.

The sweet-tooth headliners are the German pancakes and the European pastries and strudels, but the bakery case of fresh daily breads is worth the stop on its own; regulars grab a loaf on the way out. It’s a breakfast-and-lunch spot — and a genuinely local one — so plan around the hours: they’re closed midweek on Wednesday and Thursday, which surprises more than a few first-timers. Cash is your friend here; call ahead if you’re unsure.

Technically it’s a café, not a bakery — but nobody in the Highland Lakes satisfies a sweet tooth anywhere else. The Blue Bonnet Cafe has been a Marble Falls institution since 1929, when it opened on Main Street before moving to its current spot on Highway 281 in 1946. (Fun fact locals love to correct you on: it’s named after a style of hat, not the state flower.) Lyndon Johnson once held breakfast meetings in a side room, and the Kemper family has been carrying the tradition forward for generations.

The draw is the pie — fifteen varieties baked fresh every single morning, from pecan and coconut cream to the cult-favorite peanut butter cream served with a little cup of chocolate sauce, all crowned with mile-high meringue. And here’s the detail that makes it worth planning around: Pie Happy Hour, weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m., a discounted slice-and-drink deal that as far as anyone can tell no other restaurant in Texas thought to invent. Come for a slice, stay for the chicken-fried steak.

Kyle didn’t trademark the title “Pie Capital of Texas” on a whim — it did it largely on the strength of one bakery. Chef Julie Albertson has been baking since 1986, opened her Kyle storefront in 2000, and built The Texas Pie Company on her grandmother’s East Texas recipes. The pies got so popular the city leaned into a whole identity around them, and Albertson’s work has landed on H-E-B shelves and Southern Living lists alike.

The lineup runs deep: Southern pecan, lemon chess, buttermilk (Julie’s personal favorite), chocolate fudge, peanut butter mousse, and a rotating cast of fruit and cream pies, with pumpkin and praline showing up when the weather turns. The five-inch personal pies are perfect for one or two people, and the shop doubles as a full lunch spot with casseroles, sandwiches, and salads. In a town that takes pie genuinely seriously, this is ground zero.

The newest name on this list and one of the most interesting: Casa Pan brings together two baking traditions that don’t usually share a case. It’s a small, sun-drenched studio bakery just off Bastrop’s Pine Street where artisanal Mexican conchas sit beside buttery European croissants — pan dulce and viennoiserie, made side by side, fresh daily.

The signature is the concha, hand-rolled in flavors that range from classic vanilla and chocolate to Café de Olla, Matcha Vanilla, and strawberry. Add the layered croissants and flaky puff pastry and you’ve got a genuinely distinctive morning stop — conchas and croissants under one roof is not a combination Bastrop had before this. It’s young, so the case rotates and the hours can shift; they’ll tell you to check their Google listing, and that’s good advice. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Just off Boerne’s Hill Country Mile, Bear Moon has been the town’s go-to for decades. Owner Paula Hayward took over in 1995 and is, by her own count, the third baker to run the place since the 1950s — a genuine through-line of Hill Country baking tradition. As she puts it, every town out here has a bakery; it’s a strong culture. Bear Moon is Boerne’s.

Mornings run on coffee, flaky biscuits, and the bakery’s signature “piggies” — pigs in a blanket that regulars order without looking at a menu. For the sweet tooth, it’s oversized cookies, cinnamon rolls, and a case of pastries that draws both locals and Mile-strolling visitors. It’s a hearty-breakfast-and-lunch kind of place where the pastries happen to be excellent — and it’s the independent Boerne institution, not one of the newer imports up the street.

Some sweet-tooth stops are famous for a whole case. This one is famous for a single roll. Gil’s Broiler, known to generations of Texas State students simply as the home of the Manske Roll, has been a San Marcos tradition since the 1920s — a warm, buttery, pull-apart pastry roll that the bakery has been making from scratch, before sunrise, for the better part of a century. It’s the kind of thing the smell of which reaches the sidewalk before you reach the door.

The lore runs deep here: Lyndon Johnson, a Texas State graduate, became such a devotee on his trips back to town that he later had Manske Rolls shipped to the White House. Gil’s is a burger-and-broiler joint as much as a bakery — you can build a whole meal here — but the roll is the reason it makes a sweet-tooth list. Order it warm and glazed, à la mode with a scoop of Amy’s Ice Cream, or as the “Manske Melt” under melted Hershey’s chocolate. It’s a genuine only-in-San-Marcos original you can’t get anywhere else.

In the heart of Dripping Springs, Rolling in Thyme & Dough has been the family-owned morning-and-lunch meeting spot since 2005 — a bakery, café, and bistro rolled into one, with indoor-and-outdoor patio seating and a kitchen garden that keeps the food seasonal. It’s the neighborhood place, the one that’s watched the whole town grow up around it.

For the sweet tooth, the sticky cinnamon rolls and sticky buns with pecans are the move, best chased with an iced latte on the patio. But the scratch-made pastries across the board earn the loyalty — this is a spot where regulars have a standing order and newcomers become regulars fast. In a town that’s exploded with wineries, distilleries, and new development, Rolling in Thyme & Dough is the steady, welcoming constant.

The owners of The Pastry Corner decided the one thing quaint old-town Cibolo was missing was a bakery with fresh, European-inspired pastries — so they built one inside a lovingly refurbished old house on a tree-lined downtown corner, right by the railroad tracks. Regulars describe the small-town charm the way you’d describe the legendary Czech Stop in West: the kind of place you plan a drive around.

The case is where it earns its keep: glazed blueberry cruffins, flaky Danishes, cinnamon rolls, strawberry rolls, pastel de nata, and a Texas brisket croissant, plus small-batch artisan breads baked fresh daily and a full coffee bar. One reviewer drove in from New Braunfels on a friend’s recommendation — which tells you the reputation has already outgrown the town. Note the hours: it’s a Wednesday-through-Sunday operation, closed Monday and Tuesday, with later Friday and Saturday evenings.