Bake from Scratch

Bake from Scratch is a celebration of all things baking. A seasonal publication from Hoffman Media, this magazine is brimming with stunning photography, easy-to-follow recipes, techniques for creating beautiful, artisan baked goods, and endless inspiration for home bakers.

Bake from Scratch • JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2026 VOLUME 12 | ISSUE 1

Fresh Inspiration for the New Year

cookbook corner

japanese pantry • While traveling, Brian always looks for unique items to bring home and share. Check out these artisan tools and essential ingredients from his journey to Japan.

INTRODUCING COOKIE OF THE MONTH CLUB • True statement: We can’t get enough cookies. Ever. Whether you’re baking for a crowd or pulling a few from your freezer for a quick craving fix, we’ve got you covered with a new cookie recipe each month featuring seasonally inspired flavors and ingredients and our favorites mixed in along the way.

JAPANESE GÂTEAU AU CHOCOLAT

JAPANESE SWEET BUNS • Many Japanese recipes’ names are a portmanteau of their parts or ingredients, including these buns. “Pan” is the Japanese term for bread, which is combined with a filling or flavor to create the names for these—“an,” meaning “bean paste,” for anpan, “kurīmu,” meaning “cream,” for kurimpan, and “meron” meaning “melon” for melonpan.

It’s Time to Bake • Mastering Techniques and Ingredients Behind Every Delicious Creation

SCOOPS

Classic LEMON BARS

RICE FLOUR • From pillowy mochi doughnuts to charred skewers of mitarashi dango, rice flours offer a world of textural transformation

CASTELLA THE ART OF SIMPLICITY • A step-by-step guide to Japan’s iconic sponge

5 WAYS WITH BANANA BREAD • Grab your muffin tins and loaf pans for these spectacularly good bakes

Baking Fearlessly • Best-selling cookbook author, food stylist, and culinary teacher Erin Jeanne McDowell brings her signature warmth and joy for baking to the pages of Bake from Scratch as a 2026 contributing editor

JAPAN

SAWAKO’S TOKYO KITCHEN • Pastry teacher Sawako of Fait Beau welcomes travelers and locals into the gentlest form of discovery—folding, whisking, and learning Japan’s language of care through baking

A TALE OF TWO TEAS • Appreciating the Art of Preparation

THE ART OF TELLING JAPAN’S STORY • In rural Saitama, best-selling cookbook author Nancy Singleton Hachisu has spent decades championing Japan’s culinary traditions. Through her five books, she records not nostalgia, but the living art of how people really cook, preserve, and eat.

A LOOK AT JAPANESE MAKERS • Fifty minutes north of Tokyo, the bullet train glides into Honjo-Waseda Station, and the rhythm of the world shifts. Apartment blocks give way to open fields and the occasional apple pear orchard, and the air sharpens with cedar and soil. Waiting on the platform is cookbook author Nancy Singleton Hachisu—who invites Brian Hart Hoffman into a slower, more intimate way to travel, one guided by taste and curiosity.

JAPANESE BAKED Cheese Tarts • From necessary shortcut to worldwide fame

JAPANESE SOUFFLÉ PANCAKES

recipe index

Hyperbole and How to Evaluate a Recipe