Books on Baking

Taking a scientific, methodical approach to cooking and baking is sort of the ATK thang and I am so grateful. This book does a great job of unpacking not just the how’s of baking bread, but also the why’s…why should I use bread flour? Why am I adding butter to this loaf? Why is my dough sticky?

If you’ve ever felt like a toddler in the kitchen when baking bread, this book is great for answering all these questions and more. Recipes are primarily commercial yeast-based, but there is a section on sourdough and very helpful photos that give clear depictions of what you are looking for.

This book is the only one on this list that uses volume measurements (cups) rather than metric (grams). It’s fine for starting out, but to get to your A game and to make use of the rest of the books on this list, you’ll want to get comfortable with measuring by weight. Invest in a kitchen scale as soon as you can.

This is the book that really helped me nail down my sourdough practice. The equipment list is exactly what you need and his method is so thoroughly explained that when I first flipped through the pages I kept asking myself, “where are the recipes???”

Fret not: there are excellent recipes within and the method, once practiced, is easy to apply. It wasn’t a James Beard and International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards winner for nothin’.

You might want to pump some iron before heading off to the bookstore for this title because this book is heavy…in all the right ways:

Heavy on methodology - I finally understand the difference between starter and levain thanks to this book.

Heavy on recipes - from the easiest, basic sourdough loaf to the toughest recipe I’ve tried to crack on my own: English Muffins, and many, many more greats, there is a recipe to please every palate in this tome.

Heavy - as in heavy - with all the beautiful photography and thorough instructions (the most thorough I’ve come across yet!), this puppy comes in at 4 pounds. Make sure you have a large, flat surface available to keep it open while spinning up his recipes.

**This book gets an extra bump from me for the VERY helpful timeline graphics he includes with each recipe. 

I’m going to admit that this book is still a bit intimidating to me when I open it up, but that’s not any fault on the authors. They know their stuff and lay it out well. Their recipes are thorough and elevated. I aspire to perfect their brioche rolls some day.

It’s important that you know your flours with this book, as the authors chose to refer to them by their wheat names, rather than generalized “All Purpose Flour” or “Bread Flour”. This is how professionals do. They name things properly.