10 Aldi Baked Goods You're Better Off Avoiding

If there was such a thing as an Aldi superfan, my name would be written under its definition. I have been a big supporter of the brand since the beginning, and it's where I do most of my shopping. Many of its products are comparable to what you'd find in other stores, but the prices are low, and it's a less overwhelming shopping experience than walking into a massive Walmart Supercenter and getting lost in the aisles for what seems like hours. 

Despite its small size, Aldi offers an impressive selection of options in its bakery section, including a variety of baked goods and breads. Many of these products are triumphs and deserve a spot on your grocery list; others may look tasty, but are anything but. In order to give you a short list of what to avoid adding to your Aldi cart, I considered my years of experience as a professional food reviewer to curate this list of the worst Aldi baked goods I've ever had. Every single item on this list was tried within the last year and lacks the proper consistency, flavor, and/or palatability compared to similar offerings from other grocery brands. Now grab your quarters and reusable bags, dear reader, because we're going on a grocery adventure! 

I know that Aldi is considered a "budget" grocery store, but that doesn't mean it has to be this chintzy with its products. When I tasted both the cheese and raspberry Danishes from its Bake Shop Bakery label, I was devastated not only by the lack of fruit and cheese filling, but also by the paltry glaze on top.

If you buy these Danishes, you'd be better off setting your expectations quite low. When I think of the word "Danish," I think of a straight-out-of-the-bakery, crisp pastry with defined layers of puff pastry. Both of its Danishes are more like leftover enriched bread stuffed with either the scrapings from a jar of raspberry preserves or the remnants of a cream cheese spread mixing bowl. The bite is dry and distinctly bread-like, rather than crispy and flaky. When I did get a bite of the raspberry filling, I found it far too cloying, rather than a balanced ratio of tart and sweet. The icing is also hard and breaks off into shards rather than melding to the bread and enhancing the bite. 

I wish that there were some redeeming characteristics about both Danishes, but I can't say that a better alternative to them is lurking in the Aldi bakery. You're better off visiting an actual pastry shop if you're craving a fruit or cheese-filled treat to eat alongside your cup of coffee. 

As its name suggests, this product does indeed pain me. While Aldi carries a ton of tasty "international" items, including its speculoos and knockoff-Nutella-filled cookies, this French-inspired, bread-pastry hybrid is not one of them. The only good thing about them is that they're small — because I don't see how someone could get through a whole croissant-sized version of one. When I think of a good pain au chocolat, I envision one with many flaky layers of pastry and a decadent, generous chocolate filling throughout. I should have taken the hint after my run-in with the Danishes that flaky pastry is not something Aldi does well. 

Oddly, these rolls tasted like potato bread — subtly sweet and starchy. There was very little flake to be seen, which made the bite very underwhelming and dissatisfying. The chocolate inside is just as disappointing. I was expecting a coursing river of chocolate, or at least something that resembled Nutella. Instead, I was met with a hard, crunchy piece of chocolate, like one of the chunks you'd find in ice cream. It surprised me when I took a bite and was met not with softness and crispness, but crunch. 

If you want a great pain au chocolat, your best bet is to go to a pastry shop or bakery that knows not only how to make them, but how to make them well. I'm sure if you dip this pastry into coffee to soften up the chocolate, it might be a marginal improvement, but it still wouldn't warrant a purchase. 

Despite being such a small grocer (and not having an in-house bakery), Aldi carries an impressive selection of everyday sliced, specialty, and health foods-focused breads in its stores. When I tried Simply Nature Knock Your Sprouts Off bread eons ago, I'll admit that it was pretty good. But fast forward a few years, and I can confirm that this product has gone down the tubes. Sprouted grain bread is supposed to boast added health benefits, including extra enzymes that make it easier to digest, fiber, and nutrients — but Aldi clearly sacrificed the taste of its bread for all these perks. 

This bread was just so, so dry. I felt like I was eating nutritious cardboard. It didn't really have a distinct, pleasant flavor, nor did it have any redeeming seeds or unique textures to help distract me from its torrid mouthfeel. Another drawback of the particular loaf I ate, which may not be the case for all Knock Your Sprouts Off loaves, is that it was clearly thawed and left on the shelf too long. I do not doubt that staleness played a role in the consistency of this bread, but I think that even a fresh loaf would be destined for the trash. 

The good news, though, is that Aldi carries some alternatives to it. I thought its thinly sliced Graintastic bread (which is not sprouted but still may be a nutrient-dense alternative to regular white sandwich bread) was marginally better, though even that loaf had its faults. 

What good is a hot dog bun to you if it can't do its one job? Unlike sandwich bread, which folks buy not only for its intended use — sandwiches — but also for French toast and other options, hot dog buns are really only made for holding hot dog-shaped meats. If the bun can't support a heavy brat or a grilled dog, it's practically useless. 

"Practically useless" is a good way to describe the L'Oven Fresh hot dog buns I tried. A good hot dog bun is moist enough that when you open the top, the bottom "hinge" does not break. However, that was the primary issue I had with this bun. When I opened it gently, the bottom broke open, yielding two separate bread pieces. Sure, it would still work if you wanted to make a grinder on it, but if you were to plop a hot dog in it, you would end up with a hot dog on your lap, mustard everywhere, and a lot of mess to clean up. 

On a flavor level, this hot dog bun wasn't the worst of all the ones I tried. Granted, hot dog buns aren't known for being exceptionally flavorful, as they're just supposed to support the filling and keep your bite relatively mess-free. These buns are pretty cheap, but if you're looking for a brand to pick up for your next barbecue, you'd be better off shelling out a few extra bucks for sturdier buns. 

Surprisingly, Aldi's Bake Shop Bakery offers a limited selection of show-stopping cakes and elaborate desserts; instead, it focuses on small, grab-and-go options, such as cookies, muffins, and mini donuts. One of the two cakes I found on its shelves, next to the seasonal angel food cake, was this triple chocolate créme Bundt cake. I was surprised that Aldi didn't carry a normal square or rectangular chocolate cake, and even more surprised that it went to the chocolatey extreme with this one. A chocolate cake base, chocolate "ganache," and chocolate chips come together for what looks like a tantalizing bite. If you're a chocolate fanatic, you may be inclined to add it to your cart, but this is one I would still caution against. 

The chocolate cake is adequate, though certainly not as rich as I would have liked. When I think of "chocolate cake," I think of a stick-to-your-ribs, roll-me-onto-the-couch-after-I'm-done-eating kind of bite. Although some chocolate flavor was present, it wasn't rich enough to be memorable. The chocolate ganache was also very thin and lacked the decadence and creaminess typically associated with a chocolate ganache. And the chocolate chips are, well, chocolate chips — they're just thrown on as a way to achieve the "triple" part of its name. 

If you have a hankering for chocolate cake, I would recommend one of three things: Finding a good bakery, buying a frozen one from a reputable name (Pepperidge Farm makes a particularly decadent frozen chocolate fudge cake), or grabbing a slice of this one and slathering it with Aldi's store-bought chocolate frosting to make it even more chocolaty. 

Pita bread is a hard food to mess up, but unfortunately, Aldi manages to do it anyway. Pitas don't really do much by way of flavor, seeing as, like hot dog buns, their purpose is primarily functional: to support the gyro meat, falafel, and whatever else you decide to stick inside their signature pocket. Like the L'Oven Fresh hot dog buns, these pitas absolutely disintegrated when I went to open them. They cracked along the bottom seam, allowing me to open it like a wallet with a hole in the bottom. 

The flavor of these pita wraps also wasn't anything to write home about. The ones I sampled were quite dry and starchy and were definitely under-salted. While pita isn't the most flavorful bread, as it's made to let the fillings shine, there still has to be a base level of salt and flavor so that it doesn't detract from said fillings. 

Although Aldi's pita was a big miss for me, that doesn't mean its flatbreads did poorly as a whole. I actually thought the store's Specially Selected naan bread was excellent and the most flavorful out of all the breads that I sampled. It was buttery, soft, and pliable — everything the pita bread was not. You may even want to try grabbing a pack of full-sized or mini naan and using them as a replacement for pita. 

You can tell a lot about a grocery store's bakery by the quality of its chocolate chip cookies. I find that these cookies are a "great equalizer" of sorts because it's so easy for a brand to rely on cheap, frozen dough and not give these cookies the time of day. Aldi took the easy way out with its chocolate chunk cookies. These cookies are not objectively bad, especially compared to some of the other low-quality baked goods on this list, but that doesn't mean they're inherently worth buying either. 

These cookies are, in short, boring. The flavor is brown sugar-adjacent, and the chips are plentiful enough. However, there is very little that is exciting about them that would make me, as a customer, want to add them to my cart. They taste like they were made with frozen dough, too — which doesn't help their case. 

The main reason why these cookies made their way onto my list of the Aldi baked goods to avoid is that they don't hold a candle to Aldi's tastier cookie options. If you want a firework display of flavor, you're better off adding a box of its kitchen sink cookies to your cart. These cookies are loaded with pretzels, white chocolate chips, chocolate chunks, peanut butter chips, and coconut, all nestled in a peanut butter base. Or, try the cranberry oatmeal cookies, which are like a tastier version of your grandma's special oatmeal raisin treats. 

It takes a lot for me to call cinnamon rolls "bad." How can a sweet blob of enriched dough, wrapped around a cinnamon sugar filling and topped with copious amounts of frosting, be considered "bad?" Well, if it comes from the Aldi Bake Shop brand, you know it's not going to be good. 

I went in with high hopes, seeing as other food writers have said that these cinnamon rolls aren't half-bad. I didn't think they were half-bad either ... I thought they were whole-bad. Like the danishes, this dough was so dry that I felt like I was biting through a cake that had been sitting out in the sun for days. The cinnamon-sugar filling wasn't anything of note either. However, the worst part of these cinnamon rolls was, by far, the icing. I could pull the icing off the top of the rolls like a top sheet. It was disgusting, and I was tempted to peel it off entirely and just eat the roll underneath. But even then, it probably wouldn't have been worth the effort. 

Based on the consistency of the icing, I figured it might be worth heating these rolls in the microwave. The icing turned even more dreadful — it was then like molten plastic rather than flimsy plastic. My advice? Don't trust anyone who tells you these cinnamon rolls are good, and stick to the ones from your local bakery instead. 

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I don't like croissants. There are times when I get a craving for one, visit a bakery, and then dive into it, only to realize that I really don't like its texture or flavor. I had hoped that the Bake Shop croissants would help me turn a new leaf, but I can report that after trying them, I still really don't like croissants, especially ones as bad as these. 

These are not the croissants that you would get from a renowned Parisian bakery. When I cracked the clamshell container, I immediately noticed that they smelled like rancid, hydrogenated oil. Croissants are supposed to be buttery, both in aroma and taste, and I wouldn't be surprised if Aldi relied on shortening or some sort of cheaper base to drive down the cost of these croissants. When I opened a croissant, I found some separate layers in the pastry (a sign that someone tried to laminate the dough), but after a couple of bites, they had compacted together into a fatty and greasy blob. 

If you tuck in some prosciutto and arugula, or try the viral cookie croissant, I have no doubt that these bakery staples would be objectively better — but still not great. You're better off paying a visit to Costco, where massive and actually flaky croissants are plentiful. 

I am a big fan of Aldi and its low prices — especially when it comes to baked goods. However, I've come to realize that there are some objectively bad breads, cookies, and other baked goods lurking in its bakery section. I wanted to create a list of items that you're better off avoiding, so you know what not to add to your cart on your next visit to the grocer.

I have tried every single item on this list within the past year, and I didn't rely on any sketchy internet reviews to compile my findings. While the baked goods on this list vary, they share some commonalities: Mainly, their flavor and texture are not as good as those of other brands I've tried. Some of them were too dry and flavorless, while others skimped on fillings or toppings. Many of the breads, like the hot dog buns and pita, were also unable to uphold their structural end of the bargain and thus lacked utility. Overall, if you purchased any of these items, I have no doubt that you, too, would be unimpressed by them. I hope this list saves you some headaches and guides your shopping decisions.