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 chefing 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.
Review by David Whitehouse
Not a baking book, per se, but one which I’ve found interesting and thought-provoking enough to want to see it included here, and to encourage you to look at and hopefully buy.
The chapters most immediately relevant to a baker are those on breads & pancakes, and on fermented grain “porridges”. In the former, the basic [...]
Review by Dan Lepard
Books written specifically for the working baker are somewhat hard to come by. Publishers are in the book selling business, and over 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 recognise a growing market for artisan baking books, [...]
Review by Dan Lepard
Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking Across America is a book I have recommended more than many 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, [...]
Review by David Whitehouse
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 [...]
Review by Dan Lepard
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 [...]
Review by David Whitehouse
This book aims to show that breadmaking can be an option for even the time-poorest of home cooks. As with the majority of more detailed books, ‘Artisan Bread…’ .’ opens with Ingredients, Equipment, Tips and Techniques and the authors’ ‘Master Recipe’. With photographs relegated to colour inserts, the onus is on the text to guide [...]
Review by David Whitehouse
Deceptively presented like a little hard-cover novel, this book is beautifully illustrated with Gavin Kingcome’s rustic photography. The book is prose-heavy and goes into a lot of detail – amateurs may want to give this one a miss, but serious breadheads will be chuffed with such a large amount of information in such a small [...]
Review by Zoe Perrett
I’m not quite sure that I get the idea of a cookbook aimed at girls rather than children in general, but presumably the publishers had thought about this when choosing a title which excluded all those budding Jamies and Gordons in favours of the Delias and Nigellas.
However, having gone down this path, Dorling Kindersly have [...]
Review by David Whitehouse
First published in 1940, this is a thoroughly lovely little reprint, tapping firmly into the increasing trend for foraging. Without photographs, quaint illustrations alone help to evoke a sense of ‘simpler times’ and show how bounteous the countryside can be. A great stand-alone read, ‘They Can’t Ration These’ truly comes into its own when used [...]
Review by David Whitehouse
Swiss baker Gregor Michaud has worked all over the world and the recipes in this glossy book reflect his international influences. Another one for serious breadheads, it covers history, farming, wheat science, additional ingredients, extensive information on ferments, baking techniques and production methods…and that’s before you’ve even reached the recipes.
