Books have always deeply enriched my understanding of the baking process. When combined with hands-on practice, and the advice and teachings of other bakers, they can fill in gaps where questions arise. For me, too, they inspire. Not simply about doughmaking, but ideas about bakery design and marketing, and offer remarks by and about others experiences that are comforting, as we struggle to make enough money to keep it good.

I always recommend you use both online booksellers and high street bookshops, as they offer different buying experiences, and potentially appeal to different groups of people. Companies such as Amazon allow people who cannot get to the high street the chance to buy and books, browse online, and enjoy the postman delivering the books to your door. The high street bookstore, where you can ask someone their advice, and feel part of a community as you dig through the bookshelves. Years ago, while chef’ing in New York, I was offered a good job once after chatting to the wife of a restaurant owner/chef, at the Strand Bookstore.

Bookshops are magical places - try to always spend a little money in them (if we all do that, they will survive. Learn to spread your expenditure around and don’t be blinded by the ‘super’ stores). Below is the section where weI will list a few good books (some might be out of print, so you will have to search for them) and bookstores. So here I will add books here that have impressed me, and that I hope will be a good part of your baking library.

Small Cakes: from fondant fancies to florentines
by Roger Pizey
photographs by Sian Irving

The first surprise you get when looking through this book is that quite a few of the recipes are not, in fact, for particularly small cakes! There's a very proud looking Dundee cake (one of several recipes made in 16cm diameter tins), and even a 26cm chocolate cheesecake, for example. But this is only a slight quibble, and I'd much rather emphasise that the recipes give very precise measurements (so a set of electronic scales would be useful) and clear instructions, and that many of them are quite short and simple...
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Artisan Baking across America
by Maggie Glezer
photographs by Ben Fink

Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America is the book I have recommended more than others. It's the one that working bakers so often talk about, telling me 'I really like that book'. A vibrant and honest account of contemporary bread baking in North America, it also helps to demonstrate that traditions can be re-established, and that it's possible to create workable, visually appealing, revenue earning bakery systems using old artisan methods and slow processes...
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Le Pain - l'envers du décor
by Frédéric Lalos
photographs by Moussa Elibrik

Books written specifically for the working baker are somewhat hard to come by. Publishers are in the book selling business, and in the past few decades there just weren't that many bakers to sell books to. However, that has changed and we're starting to see publishers who see a growing market for artisan baking books, publishers that aren't fearful of detail or text, using lively photography that doesn't seem stuck in the 70s...
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The Bread Builders - Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens
by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott

This is a complex, detailed work without peer. If you want to bake using a natural leaven, if you ever feel in your mind that you want to give over a chunk of your life to baking remarkable loaves with care and dedication, then The Bread Builders should be your first book to start that new life. There is so much well thought information contained in the pages, told in a straightforward...
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