The Best Baking Cookbooks

One of the main aims here at Mob is to help you become a more confident cook in the kitchen. We want you to be able to bang out a killer stir fry, a gorgeous spag bol, and a beautiful risotto with ease. Those are obviously great lunch and dinner-time staples but we’re pretty enthusiastic about helping you become a better baker, too.

We’ve created a recipe collection packed with our very best vegan bakes and created foolproof recipes for sourdough, focaccia, and banana bread. If you’re wanting to become a master baker, though, you’re probably going to need a little more guidance. And that’s a-okay with us! Sharing the love is what cooking and baking is all about. That’s why I’ve made this list of the very best baking cookbooks. If you’ve always dreamed of being the kind of person who spends their Sunday creating the perfect loaf of sourdough then you seriously need to get your oven mitts on some of these cookbooks.

From Flora Shedden’s stunning ARAN to Kristina Cho’s Mooncakes and Milk Bread, there are plenty of high-quality, user-friendly baking cookbooks out there that you should seriously think about adding to your collection. If you follow the lessons of all these brilliant baking cookbooks you’ll be well on your way to becoming a top-drawer baker. All you’ll need to do then is find a butcher and candlestick maker to hang out with.

These are the best baking cookbooks on the market right now. Happy baking.

Nadiya Hussain is a national treasure and her cookbook, Nadiya Bakes, is one of the best about. If you’re a rookie baker who wants to get to grips with pies, pudding, pastries and plenty of more baked goods that don’t begin with the letter ‘P’, then this is the baking cookbook for you. All of the recipes are easy to follow and all of them result in some excellent, showstopping bakes.

Spanning from the basics to some pretty intricate constructions, The Pastry Chef’s Guide is designed to be the go-to book for anyone looking to get intimate with patisserie. Ravneet Gill’s prose is approachable, clear, and thoroughly entertaining to read. She’s ace at breaking down even the most complex instructions and it’s hard to flick through this cookbook without being inspired to whip an apron on.

Flora Shedden is the owner and founder of ARAN Bakery – an artisan bakery that you’ll find nestled in the Scottish town of Dunkeld. Her cookbook ARAN shares its name with the charming bakery and is stuffed with the knowledge and recipes that Flora has acquired in her time working there. It’s wonderful and wise. Much like Flora herself.

Doubling as a memoir and a cookbook, Breadsong is one of the most heartwarming cookbooks on the entire planet. Kitty and Alex Tait are the father-daughter duo behind The Orange Bakery and their inspirational story is enough to make anyone believe they can bake. Recipes like the ultimate comfort loaf laced with Marmite and cheese straws made with easy homemade ruff puff pastry sum up this cookbook’s fun and “get stuck in” approach to baking.

I am not particularly good at baking. I’m actually what you’d call “violently average” at baking. But Small Batch Bakes by Edd Kimber is a cookbook that’s capably fooled me into thinking that maybe I could actually enter my bakes into the local village fête cake sale. And sell out in minutes. It’s full of accessible, easy, recipes that are primarily sweet but totally delicious. Want to become the person in your friendship group who always shows up with a batch of freshly baked cookies? Buying this cookbook is an essential first step.

Brilliant Bread is a brilliant cookbook. Focussed on helping you learn how to become a better baker, this book from James Morton is a real bible of all things dough. It’ll teach you how to make dough, shape dough, and give you the ins and outs of everything from basic flatbreads to pretzels and doughnuts. It’s full of plenty of useful advice and know-how on how not to get flustered when you’re trying to make a picture-perfect loaf of bread.

Tartine Bakery is one of the most famous bakeries in the world. It spearheaded the San Franciso sourdough movement and the bakery’s iconic Tartine Country Loaf was consistently hailed as one of the greatest loaves ever made. If you want to learn how to make that enduring icon (and many more classy bakes) then you need to get your hands on Tartine Bread. This big, thick cookbook is filled with intricate recipes aimed at serious bakers.

When Claire Saffitz announced she was writing a cookbook, the entirety of the internet let out a communal cheer. The ex-Bon Appétit staffer is beloved for her infectious personality and thoughtful recipes. Her cookbook, Dessert Person, is just as likeable as she is. A lot of people lack confidence when it comes to baking and that’s why Dessert Person is out to enthuse readers with a passion for flour and dough, holding your hand every step of the way and showing you that baking isn’t something to be feared but embraced.

If you could only pick one person in the known universe to learn the basics of breadmaking from, it’d have to be Richard Bertinet. The expert baker’s cookbook, Crumb, uses different flours and ferments to showcase a stunning range of bakes. It’s not just simple loaves either. From saffron and seaweed puns to green pea flatbreads and cinnamon knots, Crumb has got you covered. There’s even a cheeky recipe for brioche ice cream which you should definitely whip out at your next dinner party.

Kristina Cho’s Mooncakes and Milk Bread is a delight. Featuring recipes inspired by Chinese bakeries, this cookbook contains recipes for everything from jianbing to steamed pork buns and crisp almond cookies inspired by her grandfather. Kristina, who is a proud Chinese-American, has created a book that’s indicative of everything that makes Chinese baked goods so ubiquitous and delicious. Buy it.

Rukmini Iyer is something of a cookbook magnate. She’s nailed pretty much every one-tin formula you can think of and The Sweet Roasting Tin is her take on a baking cookbook. Offering seventy-five easy one-tin bakes, this is a cookbook that’s suitable for all levels of expertise. Recipes for cakes, muffins, brownies, and traditional loaves can all be found within the lovely pages of this lovely cookbook.

Claire Pitak’s Violet is one of the best bakeries in London. It’s no surprise, then, that The Violet Bakery Cookbook is one of the best baking cookbooks in existence. Claire specialises in big, flavourful, American-style cakes and bakes and it’s that maximalist approach which makes this cookbook so unique. The recipes are uncompromising, delicious, and decadently stylish.

Baking isn’t just about eating sweet treats and cutting into tangy loaves of sourdough. It’s also about the therapeutic act of baking that’s required to make all those sweet treats and tangy loaves of sourdough. Benjamina Ebuehi’s A Good Day to Bake is a baking cookbook which understands the importance of that process. The writing is fluid, the recipe is easy to follow, and it’s a cookbook that capably proves that every day is a good day to bake.

Bread, Cake, Doughnut, Pudding is a cookbook that does what it says on the tin. It’s a baking Torah packed with recipes that covers bread, biscuits, buns and cakes. Oh, and doughnuts. Justin Gellatly has knocked it out of the park with this one. Our social media wizard, Hannah, swears by it and I know I can trust her opinion on anything baked goods-related.