Frances Bakery Panaderia

Hands down, the best Mexican bakery in Thousand Oaks! This place is full of homemade pastries and cakes. They sell homemade tamales on Saturdays and Sundays. Get there early because they sell out. The staff is always friendly. My wife and I got our wedding cake from here. They now accept credit cards.

Ok, this place doesn’t have donuts, Cronuts or croissant sandwiches. It’s a true panaderia with maybe 10 selections. However, I did opt for two chocolate croissants, which although not rich and buttery like at a French bakery, were flaky and very fresh… and only $ 2.50… for both! Plus, the counter guy was very pleasant. So if you’re looking for traditional Mexican breads/​pastries, this is a good place to try.

I love this place! Has never been in a Mexican bakery before but I left with 2 large boxes. Everything was delicious! Lots of choices but because they bake everything on site sometimes your favorite isn’t in stock yet. I’ll be a regular and it’s right next to another favorite of mine — Mariscos!

Take card over $ 10.
The cases have all the best pasty treats. We liked the jam filled cookies covered in coconut. The turn overs were the best. As good at Porto’s. We got the apple and guava ones. They also have sweet empanadas like custard an pineapple.
Nice lady with decent English helped up at the registrar.
Lots of slice cake available (tres leche)
I can’t wait to order a custom cake from them. Reasonably priced for sheet cakes all sizes.

I came in looking for savory empanadas but when I couldn’t find savory ones anywhere I was at a lost for what to get. I decided to go for whatever looked or sounded good. I came out with two sweet empanadas: pineapple (which I thought was regular apple) and some sort of vanilla cream with sprinkled sugar topping. I was not a fan of the pineapple (but that’s kind of because pineapple isn’t something I really enjoy) but the cream one was good. The outsides were not too sweet (just the way I like it!) and it was bready. The corners were a little hard — but at 70 cents each — it was a delicious deal!

I don’t usually find panaderias open until 9, so this was a pleasant surprise. It’s also a nicer, cleaner panaderia than most, but it has the same system of tongs and trays with no plastic that I was just complaining about for one in Camarillo. They have an awful lot of empanadas on the left side, with different fillings like apple or pineapple. On the right side, it’s a reasonably extensive selection of somewhat standard panaderia goods, like conchas, galettas, cinnamon pastries, and muffins. Overall the selection’s about double what I usually see in panaderias.
I’d gotten some sort of cookie that looked like it had a cream center, and two empanadas, one guava and one pumpkin. The cookie was awful — dry, hard, and with the center not a cream at all, and almost indistinguishable from the rest of the cookie. The empanadas, on the other hand, were noticeably better than most panaderia items I’ve had. The guava one had a pretty good sort of egg-​style dough, although it was a little tough in spots. The filling had a great consistency, though, and an interesting, almost sour fruit flavor. The pumpkin one was better than the guava, although surprisingly the dough changed to a soft, more bready one and the filling had a completely different consistency. This was thick and sort of paste-​like, with a great taste as if cinnamon had been blended carefully with the pumpkin flavor.