If you want your bread to be of the best quality, you need to start by using the best tools for making bread.

Whether you are making my Crusty French Bread, Bread Bowls, Dinner Rolls, or Sandwich Bread, these tools are all incredibly helpful and will make your job as the baker much easier.

Bosch Mixer

My Bosch Mixer is a treasured friend. I’ve owned it for about 20 years and use it several times a week. I make bread, cookies, pizza crusts, and on and on. Mixers can be very polarizing. I don’t think they need to be. It’s often a tradition handed down from mother to daughter as to which mixer you use: Bosch or Kitchenaid. Both are excellent. I’ve owned and loved both. My Kitchenaid was damaged in a cross-country move and since I have the Bosch Mixer as well, there was no need to replace the Kitchenaid. Either will work well to make wonderful gluten-free bread.

Kitchen Scale

I’ve used the Escali Kitchen Scale forever. It is really easy to tare, and measure grams, ounces, and pounds, and has a large weight capacity. It has a big enough base that most bowls and plates fit easily while still allowing the display to be visible. The Kitchen Scale has an incredibly long battery life — years if I remember correctly. You can wipe it down with a damp cloth after measuring things like rolls or loaves of bread. Just don’t completely immerse the Kitchen Scale in water. It will damage the sensor.

Pullman Pan

I have used many bread pans, but I find that I have had greater success with gluten-free bread with the Pullman Pan. It has a narrower base and higher sides than a traditional bread pan. It also holds about 9% more dough than a traditional bread pan. Most store-bought square-shaped loaves are baked in the large Pullman Pan, but I prefer the smaller version. It is just the right amount of bread to last my family for a while in the freezer. My recipe for Sandwich Bread uses the small Pullman Pan without a lid.

Shower Caps

I’m not sure who first started using Shower Caps to cover rising bread dough, but the move was genius! I love using these Shower Caps several times over and make sure to save them until they are either wet inside or have picked up any food bits. That is when it’s time to throw that Shower Cap away and get a new one. They are inexpensive and are big enough to cover my largest mixing bowl.

Cutting Board

This cutting board is beautiful and functional. Previously I had been using plastic or inexpensive wooden cutting boards from places like IKEA. I started noticing that the old cutting boards were peeling and chipping and I even found a piece of plastic in our food from a green cutting board. That was the last straw for me. I went on the search for the best cutting boards, and without question, John Boos cutting boards are the highest recommended in the world. It is so expensive but worth every penny. I went to the Boos Factory Outlet to get mine at a discount price. I use it every single day and I don’t worry that I’m poisoning my family anymore.

Parchment Paper

There are endless uses for Parchment Paper, but my favorite is lining a pan to make baked goods easy to remove. I have used both white and brown Parchment Paper and I think it just comes down to personal preference on the color. I prefer purchasing the 200-sheet package so that I don’t need to worry about running out. I also love the flat sheets and not messing with the roll version. The Parchment Paper sheets are easy to cut to fit any size pan but fit a regular cookie sheet right out of the box.

Spray Bottles

I have tried dozens of Spray Bottles over the years and find most of them lacking in functionality. They just don’t seem to work correctly. When I started making my own home cleaning mixtures thanks to GoCleanCo, I needed reliable Spray Bottles for my counter and shower sprays. These Spray Bottles are by far the best thing I have found, and now my old Spray Bottles have all gone in the trash.

Now we obviously are not spraying our food with cleaning solutions. I have all of my Spray Bottles clearly marked to stop me from doing exactly that.

I use a water bottle with water to spritz my dough before letting it rise so that it doesn’t get a dry top. I use a water bottle to spritz inside the oven for better oven spring from my loaves of bread.

Cooling Rack

I think I got my Cooling Rack as a wedding gift over 23 years ago. I’ve been using it ever since. I use the Cooling Rack to hold hot pans. The Cooling Rack is perfect for letting loaves of bread cool without getting soggy. You can even bake with the Cooling Rack when you need to get air under the food to cook it more evenly.

Bread Knife

This Bread Knife is a doozy! It cuts bread better than any other Bread Knife I’ve used in the past. I highly recommend treating it with respect and keeping it out of the hands of small children. It is incredibly sharp and very effective at cutting any type of bread from French Bread to sourdough to sandwich.

Baggies for Storing in the Freezer

I’m amazed at how people store bread. The most efficient way I have for storing gluten-free bread is gallon-sized freezer Baggies. It’s essential that they have an air-tight seal. Gluten-free breads dry out more quickly than store-bought bread because there are no preservatives. I prefer to slice my bread, place pieces of parchment between the slices, and then freeze the bread in Baggies. This keeps the bread fresh for months.

French Bread Pan

I have had my French Bread Pan for about 15 years. I used to use it when making wheat-bread recipes, but it is even better for gluten-free bread. Gluten-free bread has a tendency to spread out rather than up. This French Bread Pan helps it to keep a rounded shape and forces it to curve upward. I use it every time with my Crusty French Bread.

Baguette Pan

My baguette recipe is coming soon, and this Baguette Pan is lovely for getting those long thin loaves. It is perfectly portioned so that you can make sure and shape the loaves correctly. It also helps to stop the bread from spreading out but forces it to push up instead.

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If you are looking for some less expensive gift ideas, try my stocking stuffer list for inspiration.

Prep Tools

One of my most treasured possessions is my Bosch Mixer. I’ve had it for almost 20 years and it is still going strong. The mixer pictured is the newer version of mine, since they have improved it over time. I can make large batches of bread. It works through tough cookie dough like magic.

The mixer actually has a transmission that shifts gears when it needs to adjust to larger batches of ingredients. I can make dough for 14 pizzas in one batch. That is a huge amount of dough.

Hopefully my mixer lives forever, but if it does suffer an untimely death, I won’t even hesitate to purchase a new Bosch.

The chopper. This thing is priceless for making salsas, soups and anything where you need to chop a lot of items quickly. Hate chopping onions? No tears when you use this chopper. Our favorite salsa used to take one hour to prep and now we have it down to ten minutes flat. You simply place the veggies onto the grid, slam the lid and the neatly diced veggies will drop below.

In-Sink-Strainer is perfect for large items like a Costco container of grapes or a large batch of pasta. It rests on the edges of the sink so you have plenty of drainage space below. It collapses to be about one-inch tall when not in use.

My Food Scale is another workhorse in my house. I use it every single day to measure dry goods for baking breads or for measuring portions sizes. It is great to use with almost any dish, bowl or plate. It can measure in grams, ounces or pound. You can add an item and tare it out to reset and measure the next item. It comes in a rainbow of colors so you can choose your favorite one.

A microwave cover is perfect for those messy meals that seem to explode all over the microwave. It has steam vents and is easy to remove, even when the food is steaming hot. We love how it keeps the microwave nice and clean time and time again. It’s easy to just simply wash with soap and water.

Parchment Circles are a priceless item in my home. I have them delivered on a regular basis since we use so many. I use them for pizzas, tortillas, pita bread and a million other things. They are really handy particularly when a gluten free dough is more pliable and needs some support transferring from counter to pan like tortillas or pizza. I buy them in two separate sizes — 10 inch and 12 inch and keep some on hand always. You never know when the need for pizza will strike.

Parchment Paper rectangles are for baking things like cookies or anything on a baking sheet. I also cut them to fit into my 9×13 pans or 8×8 pans. I also use the large rectangles for shaping things like scones or biscuits or even pie crust when it’s on the kitchen counter. They have a large work area that makes dough more easy to work with and mold into shape without getting super messy.

Talk to me for 15 minutes in my kitchen and you will probably hear about my Boos Board. I love these. They are high quality hard maple wood that should last a lifetime if taken care of properly. The wood is as nature intended — clean and pure.

We formerly had plastic cutting boards and I realized they were leaving very tiny pieces of plastic in the food. I was mortified! Worried I was going to make someone sick using the plastic or bamboo boards, I started doing a lot of internet research — I have about 15 pages of documentation on which cutting board to use and why — and found that hard wood cutting boards were the way to go. They are expensive, but again, should last a lifetime if properly treated.

You need to oil them with food grade oil about once a month. That’s actually incredibly satisfying though — watching the oil soak into the wood and protect it for the next month is quite fun.

I love my wooden cutting board so much I actually have two — one is 19x15x2.25 and the other is 12 x 12 x 3.

I recently bought a new apron since my old one is just stained and nasty. This apron is soft, flexible and very comfortable to wear. It comes in lots of colors and would be something easy to add a logo or special design to the front if giving as a gift.

Years ago I switched from wooden spoons to silicone. The wood was splintering and showed food stains from previous dishes. These silicone spoons can withstand high heat and have a firm core for doing everything from browning meat to stirring soup. We have several and I love them.

Baking Tools

Our air fryer is a workhouse at my house. We use it for fries, nuggets, hamburgers, egg rolls, pot stickers and on and on. This air fryer has a large basket that holds about 4 medium-sized chicken breasts. It can hold enough fries and chicken strips for two teenagers.

I wish the air fryer pan was slightly easier to clean, but otherwise it’s just perfect.

Someone in our family eats pizza almost once a day. This simple pizza pan is great for a nice crisp crust. I like this pan in particular because it doesn’t necessarily need to be pre-heated. It gets hot quickly in the oven and crisps up pizza crust nicely — both regular and gluten free.

We were given a griddle similar to this one about 10 years ago. We use it all of the time. It’s great for pancakes, French toast, bacon and a myriad of other things. It’s easy to clean and non-stick.

Last Christmas we were given the Cuisinart Electric Griddler Elite. At first I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. But, once we tried steaks we were hooked! It’s quick to cook, easy clean-up and having both flat plates and grill plates makes it useful for a variety of items from grilled cheese and panini to steaks and chicken. It will open flat and that gives a large surface area for cooking. The dial on the side allows you to set the top lid at several heights without squishing the food.

Hopefully this list gives you a few ides for yourself or someone you love. Feel free to ask any questions or add your own favorite item below in the comments.