Welcome to my 2024 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 27, 2024 – 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!

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.

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.

Zester  – Some of my bread recipes, like the one for orange bread, call for zest.  When I first started making bread, I didn’t own a zester.  I tried to use a carrot peeler instead.  What a pain!  Zesters don’t cost that much and make zesting a breeze.

The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook – I received this as a gift a few years ago.  It’s a great cookbook with 300 recipes! The recipes are for two pound machines as well as for one and a half pound machines.  There’s an orientation section that covers topics like bread ingredients and troubleshooting.

Bread Knife – If you’re going to make homemade bread, you need a good bread knife.   Just like my bread machine, I use our bread knife all the time.

 

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. This nested set of bench scrapers includes a stainless steel scraper, a plastic scraper and a plastic bowl scraper.

Challah dough is SO sticky. The bench scraper helped a lot!

I recently reviewed the Kook Dutch Oven. It’s made of enameled cast iron and built to last. In my review, I show that this pan is for more than sourdough bread. I made dough in the bread machine and then baked it in the oven using the Dutch oven. Fantastic!!

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.