Years In The Making: Sally’s Baking 101

Sally’s Baking 101 is officially out in the world! After 3 years of work, hundreds of recipe tests, and countless flour-covered counters, I can hardly believe I get to hold this book in my hands… and that it’s finally in your hands, too.

To celebrate the release, I thought it would be fun to share the behind-the-scenes journey of how this book came to life. From building the table of contents, to cutting down an 80,000-word manuscript, to photographing recipes across all four seasons… here’s how we made Sally’s Baking 101.

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Please meet the team behind Sally’s Baking 101:

• Giulietta Pinna (prop stylist) – follow Giulietta here
• Allison Pynn (hair and makeup for my author photos) – follow Allison here
• Diana Jeffra (food stylist) – follow Diana here
• Kristopher Juniel (video team) – follow Paragraphic here
• David Flores (video team) – follow Paragraphic here
• Stronz Vanderploeg (video/photograher) – follow Paragraphic here
• Stephanie (Sally’s Baking team member)
• Erin (Sally’s Baking team member)
• Beth (Sally’s Baking team member and recipe co-author)

(Not pictured: James, Lexi, Allie, and Trina, or my wardrobe stylist, Danielle Wood, and all of my recipe testers!)

Writing Sally’s Baking 101 has been the biggest project of my career. In fact, it took three years from the very first proposal draft to holding the finished book in my hands. I want to take you behind the scenes not just of the recipe development, but the countless hours, edits, photos, and decisions that went into creating a baking book of this caliber.

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Why 3 Years?

When I began the proposal in 2022, I intentionally asked for a long deadline. I wanted to give this book the time and attention it deserved while still running my website, creating new content for you, and keeping up with the day-to-day. This wasn’t going to be a rush job. It was going to be the kind of book I’d be proud of decades from now. A true reference and teaching guide, not just a collection of recipes.

And let me tell you: it was more kitchen work than I’ve ever done in my career.

Building the Table of Contents

You’d think the first step would be jumping into recipe testing. But honestly? We spent almost the entire three years tweaking the table of contents.

My co-author Beth and I obsessed over the flow of the book. What skills did we want to teach? Which recipes made the most sense next to each other? How could we build a structure that took a beginner baker by the hand, while still keeping experienced bakers inspired?

I started by pulling 31 recipes straight from my website. Think: the classics that have become community favorites and that I knew had to be in this book, including pizza dough, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, banana bread, and more. Those formed the foundation. From there, we built out the chapters with new and exciting recipes, flavors, and techniques. We pushed ourselves to go beyond our comfort zones—not just to learn new skills, but to translate them into teachable concepts for you.

Recipe Testing & Retesting

Each recipe was tested, retested, and in some cases cut or completely rewritten. Some came together quickly; others took dozens of rounds. Beth and I would tag-team: I’d run tests in my kitchen, she’d do the same, and then we’d compare notes and make adjustments.

Starting in 2023, I shared a few posts about the cookbook recipe testing process:

1. Cookbook Recipe Testing 1 (2023)
2. Cookbook Recipe Testing 2 (2023)
3. Cookbook Recipe Testing 3 (2024)
4. Cookbook Recipe Testing 4 (2024)

And, obviously, those posts don’t even cover a quarter of the recipes in the book! There were days when my kitchen looked like a flour explosion. We went through pounds of butter, bags of flour, mountains of chocolate, and so many cartons of eggs that I lost count. Grocery store runs 3, 4x per day because we ran out of something. And still, we never rushed the process. If something wasn’t working, we went back to the drawing board.

It wasn’t just me and Beth in the kitchen, though. My team member Lexi tested most of the recipes in the book in her home kitchen. I also hired a professional recipe tester, Amanda Yee, who lives overseas, to bake through the recipes with different ingredients and tools. Because what works in my kitchen in the U.S. might not work in another country. On top of that, we had over a dozen additional recipe testers who provided feedback, asked questions, and helped make sure every detail was clear and reliable.

Recipe testing is something I take very, very seriously. For the book, I wanted each recipe to not only taste incredible, but to also work for you the very first time you try it. That meant being obsessive about instructions, troubleshooting, and making sure nothing was left to chance.

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Writing (and Cutting) the Manuscript

The manuscript ballooned to about 80,000 words. That’s a small novel! Every recipe came with detailed notes, troubleshooting tips, and step-by-step explanations. As you can imagine, it had to be pared down to fit the page count. Cutting words is painful, especially when you love to over-explain (hi, it’s me), but in the end the book is tighter, more focused, and easier to use.

Photos of test recipes:

The Photography Process

I’m the photographer behind every recipe photo in this cookbook, except for the ones where I’m actually in the shot! Those were taken by my longtime videographer, Stronz.

Photography was a project all its own. It took us 10–12 months to complete because I didn’t want to rush it. Certain ingredients needed to be in season, and I wanted the photos to reflect the freshest, most vibrant version of each bake. We shot the bulk of the book in April 2024.

To bring the book to life visually, I hired two stylists: Giulietta, a prop stylist with a literal warehouse full of dishes, linens, boards, and backdrops for every mood and project you can imagine, and Diana, a brilliant food stylist. Together, they became my cookbook styling dream team. Giulietta would arrive with crates of props that made each photo feel warm and inviting, while Diana had the magical ability to make each swirl of frosting and every flake of pie crust look its absolute best.

Every single recipe has a photo. We photographed recipes in batches, waiting for berries, peaches, apples, or cranberries (etc.!) to come into season. Each photo needed to do more than look pretty—it needed to teach. You’ll notice that there are a lot of step-by-step instructional photos. That was intentional.

We loved working together so much that they now help me with photography for my website, too. They’re talented, creative, and endlessly fun to be around—and I truly could not have asked for a better team to help bring the recipes in Sally’s Baking 101 to life on the page.

The Emotional Side

I won’t sugarcoat it (pun intended): it was exhausting. Writing Sally’s Baking 101 wasn’t just a project, it was a marathon. There were plenty of joyful moments, but also plenty of times it felt impossibly hard. My kitchen turned into a revolving door of ingredients, test batches, failures, and victories. There were late nights when I was exhausted (after a long day working on the book, running my website, and parenting) but had to pull another tray of cookies from the oven. Days when a recipe failed for the tenth time in a row and I wondered if it would ever work.

It took literal blood, sweat, and tears. There were times I cried from frustration, times I was so drained I couldn’t look at another bowl of batter, and times I said, “what did I get myself into? I can’t do this.”

But then there were the breakthroughs. The moment a recipe finally clicked, the day the table of contents came together, the first time I saw a finished chapter laid out with photos and words. Those moments made every hard day worth it.

This book demanded everything from me: my time, energy, creativity, and resilience. And while it pushed me further than any project before, it also gave me my proudest professional accomplishment to date.

This is the book I’ve always wanted to write.

And while three years felt like forever at the time, it was absolutely worth it.

Now that Sally’s Baking 101 is out in the world, I look at it and think of all the hours, decisions, and teamwork that made it possible. It’s more than a collection of recipes—it’s a true guidebook for bakers at every stage. And it was a team project.

And I couldn’t have done it without you. My readers, my friends, my family, my community. For over a decade, you’ve trusted me with your kitchens, your celebrations, and your everyday bakes. Your feedback, photos, questions, and encouragement are what fueled this book from start to finish.

This cookbook is my thank you. It’s a resource built from all the lessons we’ve shared, the classics you’ve loved, and the new challenges I can’t wait for you to try. My hope is that it inspires you, teaches you, and gives you confidence every time you turn on the oven.

From the bottom of my heart: thank you for baking alongside me all these years. I can’t wait to see what you make first.

Sally’s Baking 101 is available everywhere books are sold starting today. Happy release day, friends!

Photo credit: Stronz Vanderploeg