The Best Bakery Cookbooks You Can Own Right Now

The Best Bakery Cookbooks to Keep You Busy

With all of us spending more and more time at home due to the pandemic we are facing, we decided to make a list of the best bakery cookbooks we have reviewed so that you can use the time at home to improve your baking skills.

Whether you're a kneading newbie or a pastry pro, there's something for everyone in this round-up of our favorite bakery cookbooks. From three-ingredient bakes to multi-tiered cakes to savory family favorites, these are well-tested, accessible recipes you'll want to try over and over.

Organized alphabetically by title, this list contains some of the best bakery cookbooks you can find on the market - we hope you’ll weigh in with your favorites on our Instagram.

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BraveTart

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From One-Bowl Devil’s Food Layer Cake to a flawless Cherry Pie, BraveTart is a celebration of classic American desserts. Whether down-home delights like Blueberry Muffins and Glossy Fudge Brownies or Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream, your favorites are all here. These meticulously tested recipes bring an award-winning pastry chef’s expertise into your kitchen, along with advice on how to “mix it up” with over 200 customizable variations.

Once we start flipping through the first pages, we realize that BreaveTart is much more than a cookbook, as Stella Parks delves into the surprising stories of how our favorite desserts came to be.

What Stella has managed to accomplish in the 350 pages of Breavetart is pretty remarkable. After five years, spent finessing recipes, developing variations, clarifying techniques, and looking for potential missteps and addressing them, Parks was able to produce one of the best pastry cookbooks ever made.

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Dessert Person

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Named one of the best cookbooks of 2020 by The New York Times, Dessert Person brings Claire Saffitz's signature spin on sweet and savory recipes. In her first book, Claire shares with us delicious recipes like Babkallah (a babka-Challah mashup), Apple and Concord Grape Crumble Pie, Strawberry-Cornmeal Layer Cake, that will convert even the most "I don't like sweets" person.

In this book, Claire outlines the problems and solutions for each recipe - like what to do if your pie dough for Sour Cherry Pie cracks - 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.

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Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes

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Dominique Ansel is the creator of the Cronut™, the croissant-doughnut hybrid that has taken the world by storm. But he’s no one-hit-wonder. Classically trained in Paris, previously responsible for a four-star kitchen in New York, is now the proprietor of New York’s highest-rated bakery, Ansel has become a modern-day Willy Wonka: the creator of wildly creative, extraordinarily delicious, and unbelievably popular desserts.

In Secret Recipes, the hotly anticipated debut cookbook from Dominique Ansel, you'll learn the secrets to transforming the most humble ingredients into the most extraordinary, tempting, and satisfying pastries imaginable. Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes reveals the recipes behind his most sought-after creations and teaches lovers of dessert everywhere how to make magic in their own kitchens.

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Dorie’s Cookies

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Over the course of her baking career, Dorie Greenspan has created more than 300 cookie recipes. Yet she has never written a book about them – until now. In her first cookbook, we get just more than half of those, including all the cookies, savory and sweet, developed for a cookie boutique she and her husband ran in New York City.

In Dorie’s Cookies, you will find all kinds of cookie recipes. From the three-ingredient Gozinaki to intriguing mash-ups like Peanut Brownie Sables. If good cookies are the goal, Dorie Greenspan is an ideal guide.

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Everyone Can Bake

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Name one of the best cookbooks of 2020 by The New York Times, Chowhound, Eater, Food & Wine, Forbes, and more, Everyone can Bake, is the latest release from the acclaimed pastry chef Dominique Ansel. In his new book, Dominique shares his simple, foolproof recipes for tarts, cakes, jams, buttercreams, and more “building blocks” of desserts for home cooks to master and mix as they please.

In this book, Dominique shares these essential, go-to recipes for the first time. With easy-to-follow instructions and kitchen tips, home cooks can master the building blocks of desserts. These crucial components can be mixed in a variety of ways, and Dominique will show you how.

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Flour Water Salt Yeast

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From Portland’s most acclaimed and beloved baker comes this must-have baking guide. In this extraordinary guide, Ken Forkish shares recipes for world-class breads and pizzas and a variety of schedules suited for all home bakers.

In Flour Water Salt Yeast, Forkish translates his obsessively honed craft into scores of recipes for Artisan Bread and Neapolitan-style pizzas. In contrast to other bread books, this one is suited for the home baker. For us, have the ability to recreate all the recipes in this book in our home oven is what makes this book stand out from many others. Forkish developed and tested all of the recipes in his home oven, and his impeccable formulas and clear instructions result in top-quality artisan breads and pizzas that stand up against those sold in the best bakeries anywhere.

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Modernist Bread

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Modernist Bread provides a revolutionary new understanding of one of the most important staples of the human diet. Created by the team that published the critically acclaimed Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, this James Beard Award-winning encyclopedia of practical knowledge and groundbreaking techniques captures over four years of independent research and collaborations with leading industry professionals. The result is the most in-depth look at bread to date.

Stunning photography brings the complete story of bread to life across five volumes - uncover its incredible history, loaves from every corner of the world, and the breath-taking beauty of scientific phenomena at work above and below the crust.

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Now For Something Sweet

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The irrepressible, unstoppable women of the Monday Morning Cooking Club are back, with the very best, sweetest, and most outstandingly delicious recipes curated and perfected from Jewish kitchens across Australia and the world. A joyful cookbook that honors and celebrates the most cherished family recipes alongside moving stories of warmth, family, friendship, community, and survival, this is a book to both treasure and cook from, day after day.

With more than 110 delicious recipes ranging from biscuits, cakes, bars, yeasted doughs, and more, Now for Something Sweet, has plenty of choices for every taste. The diversity of recipes is one of the many reasons why we love this book. It is great to have in just one place the possibility to choose between a simple Almond Butter Biscuit and a complex  Dobos Torte, a Hungarian Layered Sponge Cake.

For us, this book perfectly captures the loving coziness that comes from the sharing of family recipes. Is there anything better than sharing the recipes that mean the most to us? We don’t think so! Do you?

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Pastry Love

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James Beard award-winning baker Joanne Chang is best known around the country for her eight acclaimed Flour bakeries in Boston. Joanne has published two books based on the offerings at Flour, such as her famous sticky buns, but Pastry Love is her most personal and comprehensive book yet.

Pastry Love is like a backstage entry to Joanne’s bakeries. During her time spent as a pastry chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, Joanne has created many tasty treats and compiled the very best of them here, in what she considers not just a cookbook but her baking journal.

This incredible “journal” includes 125 dessert recipes for many things she could never serve in the setting of a bakery – for example, items that are best served warm or with whipped cream on top. As you’ll realize when reading this book, nothing makes Joanne happier than baking and sharing treats with others. Her passion comes through in every recipe, such as Orange Almond Pudding Cake, Mocha Chip Cookies, and Malted Chocolate Cake.

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Sister Pie

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Sister Pie is an amazing little corner pie shop run by Lisa Ludwinski and her band of sister bakers that are helping make Detroit sweeter one slice at a time. More than selling pies, this bakery has a huge impact on its community. No one leaves without a slice! Those who don’t have money in their pockets can simply cash in a prepaid slice from the “pie it forward” clothesline strung across the window. All the ingredients are seasonal and come from local farmers within 50 miles of Detroit. A true community bakery!

Lisa Ludwinski, who honed her baking skills at Milk Bar and Four and Twenty Blackbirds in New York before opening her bakery in Detroit, has filled Sister Pie Cookbook with 45 thrilling pie recipes, like blueberry-plum balsamic, toasted-marshmallow butterscotch and malted lime. All these recipes are meticulously detailed witch makes them very easy to follow. And in addition to this, all the recipes focus on seasonal ingredients in new and unexpected combinations.

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Tartine: A Classic Revisited

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Tartine: A Classic Revisited offers more than 60 new recipes that capture the invention and, above all, deliciousness that Tartine is known for. Favorites from the original book are here, too, revamped to speak to our tastes today and to include whole-grain and/or gluten-free variations, as well as intriguing new ingredients and global techniques.

Recipes cover nearly any baking need, from quick breakfast bites to refined desserts, and the chatty headnotes lend the book an informal, friendly vibe. This is not to say the recipes aren’t on point: they are precise (rendered in both weight and volume measurements), and the instructions are just meticulous enough.

More than 150 mouth-watering photographs from acclaimed team Gentl + Hyers make this compendium a true collectible and must-have for bakers of all skill levels.

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Tartine Bread

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Tartine Bread comes from Chad Robertson, a man many consider to be the best bread baker in the United States, and co-owner with Elizabeth Prueitt of San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery. Only a handful of bakers have learned the bread science techniques Chad Robertson has developed. Now it’s your time to learn these techniques and to start making bread with your own hands. Clear instructions and hundreds of step-by-step photos will put you on track to make exceptional and elemental bread using just flour, water, and salt.

This book has a very extended list of recipes, including Pizza Dough, Semolina and Whole-wheat Breads, English muffins, Brioche and Croissants. Despite having all these different recipes, we only encourage you to start trying these recipes after you master the “Basic Country Bread”. This book has a chapter called “Days-old Bread” that includes 30 recipes that explore the many ways to use the bread, from sandwiches and salads to bruschettas and many bread-based desserts.

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The Pie Room

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The Pie Room is the definitive pie bible from confessed pastry deviant, chef and London's King of Pies, Calum Franklin.

Franklin knows good pies and in his debut cookbook, he presents a treasure trove of recipes for some of his favorite ever pastry dishes. Want to learn how to create the ultimate sausage roll? Ever wished to master the humble chicken and mushroom pie? In this collection of recipes discover the secrets to 80 delicious and achievable pies and sides, both sweet and savory, veggie and meat, including hot pork pies, cheesy dauphinoise, and caramelized onion pie, hot and sour curried cod pie, the ultimate beef Wellington and rhubarb and custard tarts.

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The New Pie

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In The New Pie, the baking celebrities Chris Taylor and Paul Arguin re-examine the amazing world of pies. Through traditional time-honored techniques, modern cooking methods (like sous vide), innovative flavors (birthday cake; Tahitian pineapple; and mocha “mystery”), and a love for kitchen gadgets (like immersion circulators and silicone texture mats), these legendary competition circuit pie experts reinvent the traditional pastime of pie-making.

The New Pie offers 75 beautiful and unique recipes with step-by-step instructions and playful photography. You’ll learn to make groundbreaking creations, including a magnificent Blueberry-Maple Pie with wood-grain lattice, the King Fluffernutter Pie and a striped chocolate Pie of the Tiger.

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Wild Sweetness

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From the creator of the award-winning food blog, Butter and Brioche, comes a unique and beautifully designed full-color cookbook that brings wild flavors to desserts as told through the seasons.

In Wild Sweetness, Thalia Ho captures the essence of the wild and re-imagines it on the plate. She guides us through a tale of six distinct seasons and the flavors inspired by them: of bright, herbaceous new life in spring, to the aromatic florals that follow, of bursting summer berries, over-ripe fruit, warmth, and spice in fall, then ending with winter and its smolder.

In more than 95 recipes, Thalia opens our eyes and taste buds to a celebration of what the wild has to offer - a world of sweet escapism, using flavor to heighten our experience of food. Enthralling, unique, and inspired recipes you’ll want to cook over and over again.