It may have happened recently that your close one started following some baking fanatics’ blogs and decided to start baking. It may be that they are baking already and you still want to give them something extra. This is my take at “what would I really like to have if I didn’t have it yet”. You may be missing some gift wrapping skills just like my daughter, but hopefully you’ll find some inspiration in this post.

Mogło się zdarzyć, że bliska Ci osoba niedawno zaczęła czytać bloga jakiegoś fanatyka piekarstwa i postanowiła sama zacząć. Może być też tak, że już piecze, a Ty wciąż chcesz jej kupić coś fajnego. To jest moja próba odpowiedzi na pytanie “co bym bardzo chciał mieć, gdybym tego nie miał”. Możesz podobnie jak moja córka nie umieć pakować prezentów, ale mam nadzieję że chociaż znajdziesz w tym wpisie jakąś inspirację.

This is by no means a complete list. Some things are more gift friendly than others. Note that it may be beneficial to prepare some starter pack as a combination of things.

I don’t have time for this. Give me a one click option.

Lazy cat. Have a look at the Weekend Bakery offer. There’s something on Amazon. Google around.

Books

A safe option. Everyone could use an extra recipe or two, some theory intro, some technique description. For the some options I can recommend, have a look at our sources page.

Books

The two I can recommend without any hasitation are “Bread” by Jeffrey Hamelman (ISBN 978-1118132715) and “Flour Water Salt Yeast” by Ken Forkish (ISBN 978-1607742739). Peter Reinhart is possibly a safe choice as well, but I haven’t seen any bakes from “The  Bread Baker’s Apprentice” (ISBN 978-1580082686), or any other for that matter.

In the second line of bread books that I’ve seen or have I would place “How To Make Bread” by Emmanuel  Hadjiandreou (ISBN 978-1849751407) and “The Children’s Book of Baking Bread” by Abigail Wheatley and Sam Baer (ISBN 978-1-4095-8219-9). These are very enjoyable books with nice recipes and a lot of explanation for the beginners. Note that Emmanuel Hadjiandreou also wrote “Making Bread Together” (ISBN 978-1849754859) which touches on the subject of baking with kids. Having seen the first one, this one also seems awesome.

Then you’ve got the celebrities, bloggers, people who happen to just have opened a new business and release a book on what they do over there. Many of those books will be ok, even awesome. The signature recipes will be spreading the authors’ love. I’m not trying discourage anyone here, as many of these books will be good. Some may be average or worse, but even then, your bread freak will not care, they just got a new shiny book on bread. Bread bread bread bread bread bread.

Baking course

You can get something interesting here. Of course, anyone can run a baking course (even I did a workshop once), so take caution. If in London, I can recommend Bread Ahead in Borough Market. They offer a lot of options, so you can safely go for gift vouchers there. A friend of mine had one of their courses and his bread was awesome.

Dough scraper

This is a nice add on. Someone may be offended if they get a single scraper for £1. I have a number of those and every now and then add something new to try. In general you have numerous options here, but the two below are my favourite ones:

Dough scrapers

The smaller one is perfect for a bowl, bends nicely to remove everything from the sides. The bigger one is good for lifting the dough on the worktop and for dividing portions.

I know the steel ones look very impressive, but bare in mind you don’t have an industrial grade surface at home and you can damage the worktop.

Proofing basket

Now this is my personal number one. Nothing beats a beautiful round bread with the spiral flour trace on top. I recommend a banetton to hold 1kg bread.

There are numerous options, some pricier, some cheaper. I only know the round ones that I have and I think that if you don’t have any precise information on person’s wishes, a round one should be the safest choice.

If you go for a basket, there are two accessories here:

• Get a cleaning brush. Every time after baking you need to clean the basket thoroughly to remove the flour and get it dry from the dough’s moisture. It should be quite stiff and safe to use with food contacting materials. I really recommend buying a basket with a brush, unless the person already has a something to clean it.

• You can get a cloth for the basket – some people prefer not to proof directly in the basket and it’s totally fine. Some stores offer a cloth to cover it. It will still need cleaning, but chances the dough will stick get very low.

  

  A banneton with a brush

Linen cloth/proofing couche

Not to spectacular, I know, but many people are missing something like this. We have around four kitchen cloths that are used solely for working with bread. Others can get stained as they are used for general things in the kitchen. Just make sure it’s made out of linen, is white or natural colour.

If you however decide to get a proofing couche, it is a bit more attractive. It isn’t a good gift for a begginner, however.

Bread on a linen couche

Scale

You cannot underestimate the value of a good scale. The one that I have has cost me quite a bit, but after a year of using I’m still pleased with it. I bought it after a basic scale I had before started struggling to measure anything.

So what’s to consider here? Choose a digital one, measuring up to as many as possible (5 kg is a minimum, 10 kg is really ok), with a 1 g increment. Or you can buy an extra one with a smaller scale, for instance up to 200 g every 0.1 g.

Avoid fancy scales with displays in the scale’s platform. It’s impossible to see the measurments when a big bowl is used.

My scale

Some scales have an option to do baker’s percentages. Most home bakers never get to this phase (I also haven’t yet), but it is quite an impressive option.

Dough lame (risky!)

Now this one gave me a lot of joy. Being able to score the dough precisely before baking, watching it expanding as I instructed (or not), doing nice pictures on the crust, getting that perfect baguette at last (as perfect as it can get for now) – that’s very rewarding.

Baguettes

But then, you would be buying a knife as a Christmas present. Somehow I can think of a couple scenarios of how bad this could get. Let them use a kitchen knife at first and then decide to buy this themselves, possibly.

A lame

Special ingredient

Brown rice flour, coconut flour, poppy seeds, malted cracked rye seed, caraway, psyllium husks, nigella seeds, chia seeds

Definitely safer than a pack of razors. Get some malted seeds, set of exotic organic flours, possibly accompanying a good book (and listed in at least one recipe from there, for instance: 25 kg bag of rye flour with “The Rye Baker” book).

Bowls

Well, bowls. Spectacular: 0.3 on a scale from 1 to 10, but very practical, if someone doesn’t have a bowl yet. Get a stainless steel one, capacity of around 5 litres and use it as part of a gift (it may fit the banneton in and a couple extras as well, but tricky to wrap in paper).

Baking tins

You can get something nice here, some fancy shapes that no one buys on their own, an Easter lamb for instance.

Cooling rack

We have three of those, always very handy. Still, even less spectacular than the bowls.

Baking stone

This is tricky. I’ve always wanted a baking stone and I still do. But bare in mind we’re not talking about this 1 cm thick circle of something 25 cm in diameter that you use for your pizza. We’re talking about a flipping block of stone. Imagine 8kg block of granite. Yup, that’s what you can buy, and it’s not even the biggest one. I guess you understand now why I did not buy one yet.

Clay baker/Iron cast pot

I can’t tell you anything about them apart from good opinions that I heard. They are said to improve the baking outcome significantly. Remember it needs to fit into the oven.

This by no means is a comprehensive list, only some ideas that came to my head. Remember: Christmas is in two weeks, so better start ordering.