Best Gifts for Cooks and Bakers

I, for one, quite enjoy perusing gift guides for new ideas, but I can't stand when there are superfluous kitchen items in there! You know the type — one-trick ponies that clutter your precious counter and drawer space. Avocado slicers, banana slicers, asparagus peelers, and egg yolk separators...I'm talking about you, you useless gadgets. Get outta here! Gift guides can be incredibly polarizing, I know! I hemmed and hawed about even doing any this year but then I realized that it might be helpful to some folks so decided to go for it. I'll be putting out a couple more in the next week or two: for kids, for gardeners, for moms, and today's guide — best gifts for cooks and bakers.

All of these are items I personally have, use constantly, and love. And most of them are items that I had for the 8 years I cooked in what I lovingly call "nano kitchens," where I had a measly 24" of counter space. So you know they've gotta be good to make the cut in dire times like those!

2021 Gift Guide: Best Gifts for Cooks and Bakers

1. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen This book revolutionized my approach to cooking, baking, and recipe development. It can be a little dense but if you have a passionate cook or baker in your life, I think they would find this absolutely scintillating.
2. Kitchen Scale - Bakers Math Kitchen Scale - KD8000 Scale I cannot adequately express how difficult I found sourdough baking at first before I had a baker's math scale. It involved flour-covered fingers scrambling for my phone, random math formulas scribbled on scrap paper, and more mess-ups than I care to share. Life (and baking) got so much easier once I added this to my kitchen quiver.
3. Unicook Heavy Duty Cordierite Pizza Stone You know I'm passionate about Pizza Friday, and a pizza stone is, in my humble opinion, essential to proper homemade pizza.
4. Lodge 6 Quart Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven I love a good Staub or Le Creuset as much as the next cook, but I have never been able to justify the expense when a Lodge cast iron dutch oven works just as well for a fraction of the price.
5. Craft Wok Traditional Hand Hammered Carbon Steel Pow Wok One of my favorite easy weeknight meals is a yummy stir fry, and a stir fry without a wok is...well, probably fine, but why settle for just fine? Also a wok pairs perfectly with the next item…
6. Joyce Chen Bamboo Steamer Now, I don't technically use this one all the time. But I do make some killer dumplings around the holiday and for our New Year's Eve tradition of building a fort, eating dumplings, and watching a movie. Once you've had homemade steamed dumplings, you'll never go back to frozen ones. Or you might, but only in a pinch!
7. Microplane Soft-Handle Zester Grater, 12" A zester might seem, at first glance, to be a much-maligned superfluous kitchen gadget, but do you know the power of citrus zest in the kitchen? It's akin to magic. And this nifty little grater works like a charm so you don't need to mess around with the clunky box grater that may or may not have remnants of cheese on it because WHY are they so darn hard to clean?!
8. Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor I could write a love letter to this food processor. I've given it as a wedding gift, I use it a couple times a week, and when our old one (my mom's from the 70's) broke I think I cried.
9. Lodge L5SK3 Pre-Seasoned Cast-Iron 8-Inch Skillet I'm not a scientist or a food professional, but I think everything tastes better in a cast-iron skillet.
10. Vitamix, White 5200 Blender, Professional-Grade, 64 oz. Container My pride and joy (aside from my daughter, obviously!) in the kitchen. Soups, sauces, cashew cream, dressings, smoothies, this baby is a true workhorse.