These Are The Bakery-Style Recipes You've Been Searching For

There's something decadent about walking into a bakery — the smell of freshly baked bread combined with rows upon rows of cakes, cookies, and other sweet treats can really do a number on your senses. And while the professional presentation (and sometimes over-the-top recipes) you see from trained bakers may be out of the reach of novices, you may be surprised how simple many bakery-style recipes really are. 

The thing to remember about baking, though, is that precise measurements are critically important to the final product. Bakers work as though they're chemists with how they manage and measure their ingredients to make sure they get everything "just so." So when you start putting the following recipes to the test, be sure to focus on the details. If a recipe calls for a teaspoon of baking powder, make sure you're leveling off your teaspoon to get the amount exactly right. And at the end of the day, remember that practice makes perfect. If a recipe doesn't come out exactly how you expected it to, don't completely write it off — it may take a couple attempts before you master a tricky recipe. 

The difference between the average biscuit and a bakery-level biscuit isn't a perfectly rounded final result. Rather, it's the crusty, flaky, soft taste that melts in your mouth. To make biscuits you could practically sell, you need a good recipe and quality ingredients, and you need to focus on one biscuit-making skill: folding the dough. Fold it even more than you think is necessary in order to get those flaky layers. And allow yourself room to experiment. For instance, add in your favorite herbs, like rosemary or thyme, and throw in some grated cheese to create the kind of biscuit that's perfect for making breakfast sandwiches.  

Making brioche is not easy. Making bakery-level brioche, which can take as long as three days to prepare? Even trickier. But this recipe for brioche put together by chef and food writer, Mark Beahm, cuts down the prep time to the better part of a day, making it a little more accessible for the novice baker. The main thing to remember is to follow the instructions to a T — ingredients (such as bread flour instead of all-purpose) and two separate rises really do make all the difference. And if you happen to have leftovers the day after chowing down on your fresh-baked loaf, use them to make French toast the next morning — the soft, flaky, thick bread is perfect for this purpose. 

Technically, this recipe for a perfect, bakery-style rye bread only takes an hour ... although you'll need to allow the bread to rise for roughly 12 to 18 hours between its 5-minute prep time and 50 minute bake time. The trick, of course, as with all baked goods, is to get the ingredients right. With a bread flour and a dark rye flour, baked in a Dutch oven, you'll have no problem mastering this crusty, full-flavored loaf. 

There's something absolutely decadent about a beautifully constructed, layered black forest cake. And for people who eschew the idea of a thick, sweet frosting, this recipe for black forest cake uses nothing more than cherries layered between each tier as a filling with a light coating of whipped cream smoothed around the sides. That means as long as you can follow instructions, you don't need to master any fancy piping or decorating skills to make a cake that looks and tastes great. 

The Costco bakery sheet cakes have a cult-like following, and for good reason: they're huge, inexpensive, and taste delicious. So what if you could save even more money by whipping up a copycat Costco sheet cake recipe at home? It'll take you about an hour to make the layered white cake, complete with mousse filling and buttercream frosting, although you'll end up making a quarter-sheet (better for home-sized ovens), rather than a half sheet. Best of all, the simple recipe gives you the chance to practice your baking and frosting skills with little risk of creating a major mistake that would be hard to correct.

Cream puffs are the kind of treat you probably don't think about unless you walk into a bakery. The reason, of course, is that they're not the simplest recipe to whip up. Which is why you should plan on test-driving this bad boy (and taste-testing the goods, of course), before you put it on a party menu. But, once you've mastered the pastry-making and cream-whipping, this homemade cream puff recipe only takes about an hour to make, and you'll love serving up something a little different (and decadent) for your family and friends. 

Basic brownies are for the birds, but this fancy, cookies 'n' cream-stuffed brownie recipe is the type of thing bakery dreams are made of. You see, positioned between two soft layers of decadent brownie lies a cookies 'n' cream filling made with — and this couldn't be easier — Hershey's Cookies 'n' Cream candy bars. Quite literally, the candy bars just melt right there in the middle as you're baking the goodies. The result is the type of treat you typically have to buy at the store, but is just as easy as making a standard brownie recipe at home.

Nothing Bundt Cakes was a bakery started by two women who just loved to bake for their family and friends, but now it's a nationwide franchise specializing in — you guessed it — bundt cakes. This copycat Nothing Bundt Cakes recipe couldn't be easier to pull off at home, especially since you get to use a box of cake mix to make it happen. The secret to this recipe? Using mayonnaise in place of one egg to guarantee a nice, moist consistency. It sounds weird, but you won't regret giving it a try.

If you have someone in your life who isn't a big fan of cakes, but loves cookies (yes, these people do exist), you can give them a special birthday treat by making a bakery-style cookie cake from scratch. By adding extra chocolate chips, colorful sprinkles, and buttercream frosting, you can truly make the cake look (and taste) like it came straight from the bakery ... but it'll end up costing you a whole lot less. 

Focaccia bread may look like it would be a complicated recipe to try (especially when jazzed up with olives and feta cheese, like this recipe includes), but food writer Laura Sampson swears that you can get the perfect loaf, even on your first try. The trick is in allowing for two separate rises — the first after mixing the dough, and the second after pressing it into a bread pan and squeezing out some of the air. The total bake time is only about 20 minutes, but you'll need about two hours total to allow the necessary time for rising.

Is there anything better than a freshly baked bagel slathered with cream cheese and served hot in the morning with a cup of coffee? Very few other things come to mind. And the nice thing is, once you master a bagel recipe you can make at home, you don't have to drive to the bakery to pick up your favorite version. Of course, making a batch does take about three hours, so you may be better off baking them on Sundays, then storing them on your counter to pop in the toaster oven every morning, rather than waking up before the sun to make a fresh batch every morning.