I love, love, love this book. This is the perfect book for the beginning baker all the way to the experienced baker. One of the great things about this book is that it gives lots of hints for baking the different recipes and also gives variations on the recipes. The book does a great job describing the different baking ingredients, equipment, and techniques. The chapters are broken down into very specific categories to make it easy to find the recipe you might want. There are classics such as cornbreads and muffins all the way to cream puffs and other fancy desserts. There's lots of explanations of terms so you completely understand how to create your breads and pastries. The only thing I wish it had was some color pictures of the different baked items. There are some diagrams of different techniques so that helps. If you know a beginning baker or someone that wants to learn to bake this is the perfect book for them. If you know an experienced baker that would like to expand their expertise this is the book for them.