Must-Own Baking Cookbooks To Make Your Library Complete

This is one great book.

The obvious passion that Andy and Jackie King have for baking and their attention to detail is just inspiring.

The book is all about technique and then getting out of the way so that the bread or pastry is really the star of the show. I am especially impressed with the way that they manipulate the temperature of the ingredients to really get exactly the results they want.

These are folks who truly understand their ingredients and how to work with them, and they are excited to share their “secrets” with the rest of us. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Talk about evergreen content. Rose Levy Beranbaum, who I would love to sit down and have coffee with sometime, by the way, wrote this Bible in 1988.

She developed the technique of using the two-stage mixing method with butter cakes rather than with high-ratio shortening cakes. The results are a meltingly tender crumb and a markedly different flavor than you’d achieve with the creaming method.

Aside from that (which is huge), you’ll find perfect “Neo-Classic buttercream” because Rose also figured out how to take the thermometer out of the equation when making European-style buttercream. Huzzah!

Want to know how to scale a recipe and get the amount of leavening correct? Check this book. It truly is a Bible, and mine is covered with splatters and such. I turn to it again and again.

Lisa Yockelson takes a different approach to baking than most other cookbook authors. Her chapters are arranged by flavor: Vanilla, Caramel, and Butterscotch, Almond, Chocolate, Ginger, Spice, etc.

Each flavor section contains between 10 and 15 recipes that were developed not only to highlight the specific flavor but to elevate it to the nth degree.

How do you make a lemon cake into an Ultra-Lemon Cake? How do you bring out all the nuances of chocolate in a Cocoa-Sour Cream-Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake? How can you bring added depth and dimension to a Vanilla Sugar Cookie?

Learn the techniques of layering in those flavors in different ways. Your baking will be the better for it. I know that mine is.

Subtitled The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio isn’t strictly a baking book, but he spends a considerable amount of time discussing dough (Bread, Pasta, Pie, Biscuit, Cookie), batter (Pound Cake and Sponge Cake, Angel Food, Quick Cakes, Crepes) and custards (free standing, creme Anglaise and bonus chocolate and caramel sauces.

What I love about this book is that he doesn’t say that using a specific ratio will give you the ultimate pie dough or cookie dough or sponge cake batter.

He does say that it’s a very good place to start. It’s the science behind the art.

Learn the ratios and then experiment from there to make your perfect pie dough or your perfect biscuit.

This book should really be called a bible, too.

From pancakes and popovers to pasta to pies and pastries and over 150 pages on breads alone (not including sourdough which scores its own chapter), if it contains flour, you’ll learn how to make it.

Written because “...there is nothing as satisfying as the act of creating with one’s own hands and sharing what we’ve created with people we love in a place we love.“

It doesn’t get better than this, friends. Each chapter comes with a “Primer” that gives you a crash course on each type of baked good. Read this like a much-loved, accessible textbook.

I think that five is a good place to end the list. Sometimes these lists can get overwhelming, and I really do want you to consider these books rather than just skim through an exhaustive list.