Baking Cookbooks To Add to Your Collection

100 stunning, delicious, must-bake recipes for everyone who saves room for dessert from the wildly popular baker and social media star behind Broma Bakery. Irresistible, entertaining, and with “I can’t believe it was so simple!” instructions, Sweet Tooth is for bakers of all levels. The only requirement? A deep, unwavering love for dessert.

There are few things more satisfying than biting into a freshly made, crispy-on-the-outside, soft-and-supple-on-the-inside slice of perfectly baked bread. For Portland-based baker Ken Forkish, well-made bread is more than just a pleasure — it is a passion that has led him to create some of the best and most critically lauded breads and pizzas in the country. In Flour Water Salt Yeast, Forkish translates his obsessively honed craft into scores of recipes for rustic boules and Neapolitan-style pizzas, all suited for the home baker.

In Snacking Cakes, the indulgent, treat-yourself concept of cake becomes an anytime, easy-to-make treat. Expert baker Yossy Arefi’s collection of no-fuss recipes is perfect for anyone who craves near-instant cake satisfaction. With little time and effort, these single-layered cakes are made using only one bowl (no electric mixers needed) and utilize ingredients likely sitting in your cupboard. They’re baked in the basic pans you already own and shine with only the most modest adornments: a dusting of powdered sugar, a drizzle of glaze, a dollop of whipped cream. Yossy’s rustic, elegant style combines accessible, diverse flavors in intriguing ways that make them easy for kids to join in on the baking, but special enough to serve company or bring to potlucks.

From the deserts of the Southwest to the shining Atlantic Coast, the USA is as sweet as it gets. In this tour de food, B. Dylan Hollis takes you on a delicious road trip to taste everything from the coffee-crazed creations of the Pacific Northwest to the larger-than-life sheet cakes of Texas. Baking Across America is the highly anticipated successor to Baking Yesteryear and delivers 100 wild, wacky, and wonderful recipes from every star-spangled corner of the good ol’ US of A.

Casual, effortless, chic: These are not words you’d use to describe most desserts. But before Alison Roman made recipes so perfect that they go by one name — The Cookie, The Pasta, The Lemon Cake — she was a restaurant pastry chef who spent most of her time learning to make things the hard way. In Sweet Enough, Alison has written the book for people who think they don’t have the time or skill to pull off dessert. Here, the desserts you want to make right away, you can make right away. Whether you’re a dedicated baker or, better yet, someone who doesn’t think they are a baker, Sweet Enough lets you finish any dinner, any party, or any car ride to a dinner party with a little something wonderful and sweet.

Nancy Silverton made her reputation as the original pastry chef for Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant Spago. Biting into a particularly delicious peanut butter cookie one day, she had an epiphany: every single thing we bake should taste this good. And so she decided to return to her roots and set to work perfecting the rest of the American baking canon. With more than a hundred perfected recipes, The Cookie That Changed My Life is a veritable encyclopedia of the very best things to bake.

This classic tome of Italian baking covers everything from breadsticks and cornetti to focaccia, tarts, pastries, and more — now updated with stunning photography, new recipes, and comprehensive tips and tricks. One of the most revered baking books of all time, The Italian Baker is a landmark work that continues to be a must-have for every serious baker.

Claire Saffitz is a baking hero for a new generation. In Dessert Person, fans will find Claire’s signature spin on sweet and savory recipes like Babkallah (a babka-Challah mashup), Apple and Concord Grape Crumble Pie, Strawberry-Cornmeal Layer Cake, Crispy Mushroom Galette, and Malted Forever Brownies. She outlines the problems and solutions for each recipe — like what to do if your pie dough for Sour Cherry Pie cracks (patch it with dough or a quiche flour paste!) — as well as practical do’s and don’ts, skill level, prep and bake time, step-by-step photography, and foundational know-how. With her trademark warmth and superpower ability to explain anything baking related, Claire is ready to make everyone a dessert person.

The Vetri Cucina Bread Program began over a decade ago and has been part of the American movement to reclaim high-quality bread as a cornerstone of our food culture. In Mastering Bread, Marc Vetri and his former head baker, Claire Kopp McWilliams, show home cooks how to create simple breads with unique flavors in a home oven. Included are more than seventy recipes for their bestselling sourdough and yeast loaves as well as accompaniments to serve with the breads.

When Nadiya Hussain, the UK’s “national treasure,” began cooking, she headed straight to the oven — which, in her home, wasn’t used for baking, but rather for storing frying pans! One day, her new husband asked her to bake him a cake and then … she was hooked! Baking soon became a part of her daily life. In her newest cookbook, based on her Netflix show and BBC series Nadiya Bakes, Nadiya shares more than 100 simple and achievable recipes for cakes, cookies, breads, tarts, and puddings that will become staples in your home. From Raspberry Amaretti Biscuits and Key Lime Cupcakes, Nadiya has created an ultimate baking resource for just about every baked good that will entice beginner bakers and experienced pastry makers alike.

The expert baker and author on the Magnolia Network takes us through her life with 75 cookies and bars from her Vermont roots and Midwestern living. With her easy-to-follow recipes, Zoë shows you how to make delicious cookies that touch on nostalgia while also helping you alter them to fit your ideal cookie needs today.

Momofuku Milk Bar shares the recipes for Christina Tosi’s fantastic desserts — the now-legendary riffs on childhood flavors and down-home classics (all essentially derived from ten mother recipes) — along with the compelling narrative of the unlikely beginnings of this quirky bakery’s success. It all started one day when Momofuku founder David Chang asked Christina to make a dessert for dinner that night. Just like that, the pastry program at Momofuku began. With all the recipes for the bakery’s most beloved desserts — along with ones for savory baked goods that take a page from Chang’s Asian-flavored cuisine.

Yotam Ottolenghi is widely beloved in the food world for his beautiful, inspirational, and award-winning cookbooks, as well as his London delis and fine dining restaurant. And while he’s known for his savory and vegetarian dishes, he actually started out his cooking career as a pastry chef. Sweet is entirely filled with delicious baked goods, desserts, and confections starring Ottolenghi’s signature flavor profiles and ingredients including fig, rose petal, saffron, orange blossom, star anise, pistachio, almond, cardamom, and cinnamon. A baker’s dream, Sweet features simple treats such as Chocolate, Banana, and Pecan cookies and Rosemary Olive Oil Orange Cake, alongside recipes for show stopping confections.

More than a decade ago, Chad Robertson’s country levain recipe taught a generation of bread bakers to replicate the creamy crumb, crackly crust, and unparalleled flavor of his world-famous Tartine bread. His was the recipe that launched hundreds of thousands of sourdough starters and attracted a stream of understudies to Tartine from across the globe. Now, in Bread Book, Robertson and Tartine’s director of bread, Jennifer Latham, explain how high-quality, sustainable, locally sourced grain and flours respond to hydration and fermentation to make great bread even better.

Popular baking personality and lawyer turned baker Vallery Lomas debuts her first baking book celebrating more than 100 recipes for everything from Apple Cider Fritters to Lemon-Honey Madeleines and Crawfish Hand Pies to her Grandma’s Million Dollar Cake. Vallery shares heirloom family recipes from her native Louisiana, time spent in Paris, The Great American Baking Show (which she famously won!), and of course sweets and breads inspired by her adopted hometown, New York City. Vallery’s “when life gives you lemons, make lemon curd” philosophy will empower legions of bakers and fans to find their inner warrior and bake their best life.

Claire Saffitz returns with 100 recipes for all dessert people — whether you’re into impressive-yet-easy molten lava cakes, comforting rice pudding, or decadent chestnut brownies. In this all-new collection, Claire shares recipes for icebox cakes, pies, cobblers, custards, cookies and more, all crafted to be as streamlined as possible. (No stand mixer? No problem! You won’t need one.) To keep the recipes straightforward and simple, Claire makes sure each recipe is extra efficient, whether you’remaking a Whipped Tres Leches Cake with Hazelnuts or Caramel Peanut Popcorn Bars. Fans will find all the warmth, encouragement, and deliciously foolproof recipes with loads of troubleshooting advice that they’ve come to count on from Claire.

In A Good Bake, Melissa Weller shares her meticulously honed, carefully detailed recipes for producing impossibly delicious – and impossibly beautiful – baked goods. A chemical engineer before she became a baker, Weller uses her scientific background to explain the whys and hows of baking, so home cooks can achieve perfect results every time. With gorgeous photographs by the award-winning Johnny Miller, and tutorials that demystify all of the stuff that sounds complicated, like working with yeast, sourdough starters, and laminating dough Weller’s book is the one guide every home baker needs.