16 Best Bread Baking Books

Forkish teaches artisan bread and pizza baking with recipes adapted to a home oven. Straight doughs, preferments, and naturally leavened breads introduce different schedules and techniques, with explanations of baker's percentages, dough ratios, equipment, and maintaining a levain starter.

Robertson teaches the bread-making methods developed at San Francisco's Tartine Bakery through detailed instructions and step-by-step photographs. Variations on a master recipe introduce different loaves, while sweet and savory dishes show how to use bread after its first day.

Hamelman explains bread-making techniques through detailed recipes, drawings, and photographs for professionals and experienced home bakers. This edition covers a wide range of breads, including sourdough, rye, brioche, flatbreads, and French loaves, with step-by-step guidance throughout.

Reinhart teaches twelve stages of bread making through clear instructions, photographs, and master formulas. Classic breads, bagels, and pizza dough connect practical technique with baking science and history, while this revised edition updates methods and adds measurement and temperature conversions.

King Arthur Baking Company brings together yeasted and naturally leavened breads, from familiar home loaves to recipes influenced by baking traditions around the world. Technique explanations and practical guidance connect the recipes with dough handling, fermentation, shaping, and baking.

Reinhart explores baking with sprouted flours, whole and ancient grains, and alternative ingredients. Fifty recipes and formulas introduce new methods alongside guidance on soakers, preferments, and sourdough starters, including allergy-friendly and gluten-free approaches.

Hertzberg and François adapt their stored-dough method to gluten-free bread, mixing batches ahead for later baking. Ninety recipes and guidance on flour blends show how to make varied breads without wheat, barley, or rye, with limited active preparation for basic loaves.

Jim Lahey explains his no-knead approach to bread, using slow fermentation in place of extensive hands-on work. The cookbook develops a basic method through variations on loaves and rolls, showing home bakers how time can transform simple ingredients.

Maurizio Leo explains the fundamentals of sourdough, from managing a starter to fermentation and baking. Detailed techniques and recipes cover loaves, pizza, and sweet baking, helping readers apply naturally leavened methods across different kinds of dough.

America's Test Kitchen teaches bread baking through recipes presented as photographed tutorials. Instructions for loaves, rolls, flatbreads, and other styles explain the appearance and handling of dough at successive stages, connecting practical steps with the reasons behind them.

Baker Martin Philip intertwines personal recollections with seventy-five recipes, exploring the place of bread in a meaningful life. His account of finding a vocation in baking accompanies practical techniques and reflections on craftsmanship, family connections, and the act of sharing food.

Sarah Owens introduces baking with a homemade sourdough starter and applies it beyond conventional bread. Recipes include rustic loaves, cookies, cakes, scones, flatbreads, and tarts, combining fermentation with a broad range of sweet and savory baking.

Dan Lepard combines bread recipes with photographs and encounters from his travels around Europe. Home and professional baking traditions inform his approach to fermentation, ingredients, and working dough by hand, giving readers a varied collection to explore.

Coauthored with Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez, this cookbook brings the bakery's breads and stories home. It teaches bakers to make global staples and lesser-known favorites while showing how Hot Bread Kitchen supports immigrant women.

Josey Baker teaches bread making through illustrated lessons that progress from a basic loaf to more complex breads. Recipes and explanations also cover pizza, pocketbreads, and sweet treats, with a conversational approach intended to encourage beginning bakers.

Daniel Leader explores artisan bread making through encounters with bakers, farmers, millers, and scientists. Recipes accompany discussions of wheat, milling, sourdough starters, and dough mixing, connecting traditional methods with experiments and innovations in contemporary baking.