2023 Holiday Gift Guide for Cooks and Bakers
Welcome to my 2023 Holiday Gift Guide for Cooks and Bakers! Are you looking for a gift for someone who cooks or bakes? (Don’t forget to get something nice for yourself too!) Here are some gift suggestions suggestions based on things I use all the time!
Last updated November 22, 2023 – Originally posted in 2017
Going through this list of items is like visiting with me in my kitchen. You can see what tools I use as I’m making bread.
Let’s get started!
Measuring Glass – The Man of the House said we needed a measuring glass. I wasn’t convinced, but it turns out he was right. We use it all the time. It’s perfect for measuring small amounts of honey or other liquids.
Dry Measuring Cup Set – People who make bread need two types of measuring cups. One set for dry ingredients and another set for wet ingredients. Dry measuring cups are for measuring things like flour and sugar. You scoop things into the cup and then level off with a straight-edged kitchen utensil.
Wet Measuring Cup – For measuring liquids like milk or water you need a see-through measuring cup. I have a collection of sizes to accommodate various recipes.
This kind of measuring cup comes in handy for making apricot bread.
16.5 by 11.75 inch baking and cooling rack – In 2019, I needed a new cooling rack.
As I was reading the reviews for different cooling racks, I noticed that the big complaint was rust. People bought a cooling rack, only to discover that it quickly became rusty. This seemed to happen on every cooling rack I read about.
It made it difficult to choose a rack. I crossed my fingers and ordered this one.
It’s November of 2023 and I’m happy to report that my new cooling rack hasn’t rusted at all! It’s as bright and shiny as the day I got it.
Here’s the cooling rack in action under a loaf of eggnog bread.
Bench Scraper Set– I’ve started using a bench scraper when working with dough. It helps me move sticky dough around and I love it when I’m dividing dough for rolls or buns. I use a plastic one, but this set also comes with a stainless steel scraper for those of you with more durable working areas.
Challah dough is SO sticky. The bench scraper helped a lot!
Gamma Lids – We bought this set of eight 2-gallon buckets with Gamma Seal lids to store flour and other food products. I love them!! (If you’d like to buy them one at a time, here’s another link for single two-gallon buckets with Gamma Lids.)
See more about how we store flour in bulk with our Gamma Lids
If you’re not familiar with Gamma Seal lids, you’ll want to check them out. It makes opening buckets of flour a breeze! Note the top of the buckets. I can easily grab the top of the bucket and twirl.
And moving from 5-gallon buckets to 2-gallon buckets makes my life much easier! I could lift the 5-gallon buckets . . . barely. Here’s more information about how we store flour in bulk.
Pizza Stone – The Man of the House, TMOTH, has always made great pizza. It’s even better now that we own a pizza stone!
We wondered if a pizza stone would really make that much of a difference. It totally did! We’re thrilled that we bought it.
This pizza recipe has a few shots of the pizza stone in action.
Wondering what bread machine to buy? I’d buy a Zojirushi machine.
Zojirushi bread machines are well built and make great bread.
I make all the bread, hamburger buns, dinner rolls, pepperoni rolls and hot dog buns for our household. That means that I use my bread machine two to three times every week. In my experience, Zojirushi bread machines will last four to six years under those conditions.
Zojirushi currently offers two models of two-pound bread machines. Those are the the BB-CEC20 Home Bakery Supreme and the BB-PDC20 Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus.
Both are good machines. I’m giving you the highlights here, but if you want to know more I’ve got an article devoted to picking out a bread machine.
The BB-PDC20 Virtuoso Plus machine is really popular. However, I had questions about this machine, including the usefulness of the special cycles. I wrote about this in my article devoted to picking out a bread machine.
Pros of the Virtuoso Plus:
- Gluten-free setting
Cons of the Virtuoso Plus:
- More expensive
- No quick dough setting
I think the BB-CEC20 Home Bakery Supreme is a good choice for most people.
Pros of the Home Bakery Supreme:
- Less expensive
- Has a quick dough setting
Cons of the Home Bakery Supreme:
- No gluten-free setting
Regarding the 2 gallon buckets with the Gamma Seal lids: I want to use them to store flour. Do I need oxygen absorbers to put into the buckets, and if so, what do you recommend. I know they come in different sizes. Thank you.
Great question! However, I’ve never used oxygen absorbers so I’m not sure. We go through flour fairly quickly so it’s not stored for long. Six months at the most.
First I want to thank you for your delish sour (or not) bread recipe! Yum!
I have the Zojirushi Virtuoso Plus that makes the nice, large 2 pound loaves, and now I need bags to store the loaves I have made. My old bread machine made small almost square loaves that fit in a 1 gallon zip bag, but these do not. Can you please add a link above to whatever bags you use? I need to be able to freeze bread, keep it on the counter without drying out, and give loaves as gifts. I would rather use bags than wrap in cling film.
Thank you in advance!
I put my bread in 2-pound zip bags. I’ve gotten them at Albertson’s and CHEF’STORE.
Nicely done web site! Do you know of, or ever use bread pans in the oven? While I have had glass in the past (it broke), these days I use metal (mostly for white breads) and ceramic (mostly for dark(er) breads like whole wheat or multigrain) pans too. Forget silicone, as NO ONE would like their bread to look, or taste like that (can you say soggy crust with a doughy crumb?) ever again! Any help would be appreciated as there doesn’t seem to be any ratings for the different manufacturer’s :-/
I don’t really use bread pans in the oven. For me part of the fun of using a bread machine is to let the machine do all the work. 🙂 I can tell you that brownies work best in a pyrex pan. I’m not sure if that works for bread though.
Hi Michel,
I don’t have a bread machine but I make quite a bit of bread. I put it in a preheated oven in my cast iron lidded pot. I use the five minute a day bread method and I let my bread dough proof on a sheet of parchment paper in a bowl. This method make artesian style bread.Bread is so fun.
My Best to You and Yours,
Greg
Do you have any bread cutter that you recommend? I can’t cut a reasonably sized slice to save my life, lol! There are so many options out there, and I get hung up in reviews. Any assistance appreciated!
Can you help me??? I am gluten-free and make a lot of my own bread with my bread machine. I can not find bread machine yeast anywhere. I always have used fleischmans bread machine yeast. Is there another type of yeast I can use in my bread machine?
Check out this article on yeast. It should help.
How universal are the blades that are shown on Amazon I have a Oster and the blade is showing a crack and I would like to get a new one . I can not find a blade on the zoster website maybe it is there somewhere but I can not find it . I use it every 10 days to make either white or raisin bread I have not purchased any bread this year . ( and by the way I ask you about adding the raisins and I put them in with the flour and they end up throughout the bread great recommendation)
They aren’t.
Even within the same manufacturer lines – like Oster- they use 2 different kneading paddles that fit 2 different pans. And they are rarely cross compatible between different manufacturers. The shaft in the pans can have different lengths, diameters, ‘key hole’ cuts etc. In other words kneading paddles – bread pans as well – are machine model number specific.
Having said that I have an older model Oster myself. Try Goodmans.net in Florida. That’s where I got an extra pan and paddle for my trusty old Oster.
Goodmans has detailed machine model number compatibility info for these parts. Check that info before ordering anything.