The links on this page go to my Amazon affiliate account. I have mixed feelings about Amazon, so if you want to source these from a local shop, or a different online retailer, you have my blessing.
These are all books and products that I actually use. If you have any questions about any of these products (or any other products, I suppose), please contact me and I’ll do my best to respond in a useful manner.
Books on Bread
Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes
Jeffrey Hamelman
This is my go-to book when it comes right down to it. It splits the difference between being a book for professionals, and something a home baker can use.
The recipes aren’t cutting-edge, hipster recipes, but they all work. Great tips on technique, how to make starters, baker’s math, and other things that will make you a better baker.
Ken Forkish
This book walks you step-by-step through the process of making delicious, artisan bread. He writes a lot about what it’s like working in a production bakery, and he takes those recipes and gives you techniques to make great, artisan loaves at home.
This book was one of the first to really popularize the baking in a dutch oven technique.
Chad Robertson
Chad Robertson is one of the early luminaries of the artisan bread revolution, and Tartine – his S.F. bakery – is someplace that bakers (and eaters) make a pilgrimage to when they’re in The City.
This is his first book, in which he walks you through his method of bread baking.
Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez
This 2016 Piglet Award winning book is filled with really interesting recipes for breads from around the world.
It is also a wonderful story of this NYC bakery that works with immigrant women to give them skills in the culinary industry. This book introduced me to some wonderful flatbreads that I’d never tried before.
Vanessa Kimbell
This is a new book to me, but I think it may become one of my go-to recommendations for someone just learning to bake sourdough bread. The instructions are step-by-step and detailed and – at least to me – seem easy to follow.
The title makes it seem like this might be primarily about health, but in fact it’s mostly just a good basic bread book written by someone who appreciates the benefits of sourdough bread.
Stanley Ginsberg
Rye flour is not the same as wheat flour. Many bread books deal with rye as just another flour, but it has its own qualities and needs to be treated differently in some ways.
This book will teach you a ton of things that you don’t know about working with rye, and has some really interesting and delicious recipes for rye breads from around the world.
Maggie Glezer
I literally wept while reading this book. Maggie Glezer writes lovingly about both Jewish breads, and Jewish tradition and ritual around bread baking and eating. From multiple challah recipes, to beautiful sephardic flatbreads, this James Beard award winning book is a must-have for anyone interested in deepening their Jewish bread baking repertoire.
Dutch Ovens
If you only get one dutch oven this is the one to get. It’s big enough to bake a 1 lb boule. If you use it upside down it’s easy to load. If your oven is big enough, get two and bake two at a time.
This dutch oven is actually a pain to load unless you use parchment to help lower the loaf into it. Nonetheless, it’s a great size for making a nice large boule and I probably use these more than the others.
Go figure.
If you want to make loaves that aren’t round – like a Demi-baguette for example – this is a great option. Theoretically, you can use it upside down, but this is kind of heavy, which makes it kind of unwieldy. But it’s big enough to load pretty easily.
Baking Accessories
Most lame are simply a tool to hold a razor blade. They come either curved or straight. For the most part the curved is used for functional scoring, and the straight for decorative scoring. This was the recommended lame of Cook’s Illustrated. I got one as a gift and, as advertised, it holds a razor blade. You can get fancy ones if you want, but this one is inexpensive and works great.
I don’t do a lot of decorative scoring, so I don’t really have a straight blade lame to recommend at the moment. I have a Mure & Peyrot lame that I use from time to time, but it’s plastic and I expect it will break soon, like the curved lame I got from them years ago. I’m keeping my eyes open for one I can recommend. I often just use a razor blade held between my fingers, which I very much DO NOT RECOMMEND.
This is solid, fast and accurate, digital thermometer. It’s neither the cheapest, nor the most expensive, but it does everything I need a thermometer to do – measure the temperature of something, and make it easy to read the display.
I use this mostly for checking the temperature of the wood burning oven to know what to bake when. Though I don’t use it much in my in-the-house bread baking, I do sometimes wander around the house on really hot days and take the temperature of random things, just for fun. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.
This scale is a real champ. I’ve used mine almost every day for the last five years and it’s still going strong. I love the pull out display when I’m using a large container, and the 11lb capacity is plenty big for anything I’m going to make at home. The metal platform comes off so it’s relatively easy to clean.
For many years I either estimated, or guessed, or jumped through some odd hoops when I needed to measure something less than 1 gram, something that often happens when making a poolish or other pre-ferment. When I finally sucked it up and bought this cute little scale not only did my recipes come out much more consistently, but there was much less cursing while baking. Don’t be like me, get one of these now.
I’ve had this timer for years and years and it does exactly what it’s supposed to do – it tells me when to check on things to see if they’re done. it’s easy to set, and has an appropriately annoying sound when time is up. Small enough to slip into a chefs’ coat pocket, or you can attach to the fridge with the rear magnets, or hang around your neck with the cord.
If you are going to make baguettes, or batards, or any. shape that isn’t round, you’ll want to have a couche. These sheets of untreated cloth, lightly floured, are perfect for keeping the skin of the dough dry while rising, giving you that perfect, crispy crust you’re after.
I have a bunch of these that I’ve gotten from different places, many of which I don’t remember. They all seem to work just fine. This one that I bought from Amazon is no exception.
I confess, these aren’t the actual bannetons that I use. I have a bunch of different ones that I’ve picked up over the years, and I can’t remember what I got where. These have good reviews, and look like they’ll do the trick. That said, you can use just about any kind of bowl or basket with a dish towel and a dusting of flour and it will work just fine. But these give you a “professional” look. I’ve ordered a couple and I’ll let you know how they work out.
These pans are amazing! Most of the loaf pans I use I’ve either had for years, or we picked them up at garage sales and thrift stores. Though they work fine, they are mostly thin sided metal, which makes the heat transfer less stable. (I kind of just made this up, but I believe that it’s true). These are thick sided and solid. You can use these with the slide-on lid for pullman loaves, or without the lid as regular loaf pans. Note, these 9×4 pans are larger than…other smaller pans. Make sure they fit the recipes you want to make, or that you make recipes that are large enough to fill these.
I have a number of these white, plastic bowl scrapers. Most of them I have no idea where I got them, or what brand they are. They all work about the same and, at least in my experience, last forever (unless you use them to pry out nails, or scrape up floor tile, or other things they were not designed for).
If you bake for long enough, these metal dough cutter/scrapers will come to feel like they are part of your hand. You will use them for separating the dough into the proper sized pieces, for tightening up your pre-shaped dough, for cleaning up your workspace, and many other things. This one fits my hand well, but I suspect it’s a personal thing and that you will have to find the one that you like best.
Another bench scraper that I use a lot. This one also has some ruler markings on it to help with measuring things that need to be measured (croissants anyone?). I like the feel of the Dexter-Russel better, but this one is a little less expensive.
I find it very useful to have a number of these in different sizes to use for different things. The smaller one I use for keeping starter in. The larger ones I use for increasingly large batches of dough. The 12qt is as large as anything I ever use for baking in my home kitchen.
NOTE: Sometimes they come with lids, and sometimes they don’t. It’s good to have lids, so make sure that if it doesn’t come with a lid that you buy one. (I’ll try to get lid links up soon).
This small one is what I keep my sourdough in for my day-to-day home bakes. If I had one full of jellybeans I’d be happy too.
