A 2023 James Beard Award nominee for Baking and Desserts, and a book with an unusually clear point of view: Laurel Kratochvila is an American who trained in a French boulangerie and now runs a Jewish bakery and bagel shop in Berlin, so she writes about European baking as a working baker rather than a tourist.

Ninety nine recipes, arranged by what you are actually making. Breads first, then brioches and enriched doughs, then viennoiserie and laminated pastry, then tarts and biscuits. Each chapter opens with the foundation recipes and the technique underneath them, so shaping, fermentation, seasoning and fillings are taught once and then used everywhere.

Woven through it are profiles of eleven other European bakers from Paris, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Madrid, London and Lisbon, and 290 colour photographs of what they make. It is a serious baking manual that happens to be beautiful enough to leave out on the table.