Best Baking Cookbooks for Beginners

Want to start baking as a hobby or profession? Here are the best baking cookbooks for beginners that will take you miles ahead in your journey.
Are you a first-time baker that has a couple of simple cookie recipes at the tip of their hands but still keep confusing the difference between baking powder and baking soda? Or you’re an expert at whipping up some croissants and cakes without any difficulty. Whatever the case, bakers learn new things everyday and with the right cookbook on baking, you’ll be inspired further as well as learn some new ideas and techniques for future baking experiences.
So take out your baking sheets and mixers, because the following are some of the best baking cookbooks available out there.
Best Baking Cookbooks
#1.The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion
Regardless of where you currently are in the baking journey, this cookbook is the best reference you’ll come across in a long time. There’s a customer who stated that they had to buy a second copy after the first one became worn out. Since there are several decades of trial recipes out there, the King Arthur cookbook explains in detail the techniques behind the science of baking in a way that you can understand what needs to be done, how it’s done and why you need to do it.
There’s a section centered on sweeteners, flours, fats and leavens and how all of them are used. There’s also a section on troubleshooting. Of course, there’s a wide range of useful recipes, from fruit tarts to flatbreads. This cookbook is a bakers must have!
#2.The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
This cookbook is written by Peter Reinhart who also wrote 10 bread books with a teaching experience of three decades and has been learning about different techniques from the artisanal bread industry. This book is centered on centered on the time he spent in Paris apprenticing with various professional bakers, learning about the standard 12 steps of bread making, alongside more than one hundred step-by-step pictures.
The science, history and high-level technique on food put together to come up with 50 master formulars. The most popular recipe in Reinhart’s cookbook is the pain a l’ancienne, but you’ll also come across recipes for pizza dough, brioche, poolish focaccia, bagels, pain de campagne, ciabatta and many others. The instructions are captivating and well detailed, making the cookbook the best reference and guide for someone looking to become a professional bread baker and in your own kitchen.
#3.The Cake Bible
Most cookbooks about baking that can be found on the internet include at least on by Levy Beranbaum (you’ll find that the ceramic pie pan she designed is a great present for every gourmet chef). Beranbaum’s obsession and chemistry background on the technique behind baking (the reason why she wrote her master’s thesis behind the effects on the quality of a yellow cake especially when made using sifted flour) adding some edge in terms of baking, and why the Cake Bible live up to its title.
There’s a wide range of techniques and recipes which can transform a first-time baker to a master. In the end, you’ll be able to bake an excellent chocolate cake using just three ingredients, with a little sugar but maintaining the flavor, baking the best layered cake within 5 minutes. This a great reference cookbook that you may end up using for years or even decades.
#4.Flavor Flours, A New Way to Bake with Non-Wheat Flours, Including Sorghum, Rice, Teff, Nut, Buckwheat and Coconut Flours
Most times, gluten-free cookies, breads and cakes just come out in disappointing versions of the intended one. This cookbook proves otherwise as it enables you to bake the textures and flavors of flours that don’t contain wheat such as coconut, buckwheat, rice, sorghum, teff and nut.
The writers of this cookbook, Maya Klein and Alice Medrich, ensured the chapters were organized by every alternative flour, as well as notes on the texture and flavor. Showing you how to stock the flours, what flavors go well together and the best way of working with your favorite recipes. It’s little about allergen-free or low-carb baking and a lot to do with creating very tasty gluten-free pastries that aren’t disappointing: think of blueberry corn flour cobbler, buckwheat gingerbread, chocolate chestnut souffle cake and much more.
#5.Pie in the Sky Successful Baking at High Altitudes
This cookbook written by Susan Purdy is meant for everyone, it acts as a great reference for baking and is not just people living in high altitude. The recipes were tested from 5 varying locations within the United States, coming up with a total of a hundred breads, cakes, cookies, pies and other pastries, that can all be baked at sea level (tests were conducted in Connecticut), 3,000 feet (tested in Virginia and North Carolina), 5,000 feet (tested in Colorado and Idaho), 7,000 feet (tested in New Mexico) and 10,000 feet (tested in Colorado).
The adjustments made were not only gotten from different altitudes, but the author explains why every change was done. There are drool-worthy recipes like Vail Lemon-Poppy Seed Loaf, Celestial Challah and Sour Cream Streusel and Chocolate Buttermilk Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Icing. This is the best cookbook for bakers in high-altitude.
#6.The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs
This cookbook is loved by many baking and cooking adults because of the easy-to-understand techniques and great recipes. It gives detailed explanations on the right way to do things, and even better why. This cookbook for young chefs comprises of 100 recipes or more, plus it has been used by more than 5,000 kids, providing step-by-step instructions, techniques and pictures.
Young bakers will learn the right way to melt butter, how dough is shaped and rolled as well as other tips like the range for oven temperatures, enabling them to adjust the time range according to a specific recipe. The kids will know how to set the timer at the required time setting and check the progress until it rings. The final results will be tasty and well-made foods that kids love including brownies, cupcakes, pizza, soft pretzels, pies, empanadas and many others.
#7.The Art of French Pastry, A Cookbook
If a lot of the baking you do is centered on cookies, cakes, crafting eclairs or palmiers of which feels daunting at times.
There are very many good pastry cookbooks everywhere, but the thing that makes The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook by Martha Rose Shulman and Jacquy Pfeiffer unique is its effectiveness and the fact that it begins with the techniques for making different kinds of pastries ranging from pate a choux to pastry cream. Thanks to the book’s reference photos and detailed instructions, you’ll know the right way of using the ingredients to create your favorite pastries. With it, you’ll be able to make cream puffs, mille-feuilles and brioche within a short time.