How adept are you with baking?

I made some bread one time in my sisters EAZY BAKE OVEN. Had to go with a 150 watt light bulb as the 60 just wouldn't bake it!

I was pretty bad arse when it came to baking bread. (Except for that one time that will haunt me forever.) I never really got into baking cakes and such. I just knew I would gain 30 lbs if I did. But deep down I want to start a cheese cake bidness.

I'm a baker...fairly serious about it, esp yeast breads. You can divide baking into 2 diff categories: with yeast and without. The chemistry/handling/techniques differ wildly between the two. There are probably more TERRIBLE baking cookbooks than any other category--don't buy a baking cookbook authored by anyone but a baker. Too many wannabees & savory cooks promote incorrect info & terrible technique, with inaccurate recipes.

Book suggestions: (LA public libraries will have all these, you can get 'em through free interlibrary loan)
Yeast baking: Peter Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice" is a damn good place to start. Detailed info, photos, solid recipes with enough descriptive detail to get even a novice started down the road to proficiency. After that, I'd rec Jeffery Hamelman's "Bread" to expand your horizons. Jim Lahey's "My Bread" is another good beginner's book focusing on very wet dough & a low-yeast, long rise loaf.

Non-yeast baking: if you don't know a cake from a cookie, I'd suggest Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours" (all of her other books are great, too). That woman can write a recipe--clear, easy, and full of contemporary flavors. Alice Medrich's "Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts" has a bunch of basic recipes with lots of riffs to customize; ditto for her "Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy" cookie book.

General interest on baking science: Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" will help you to understand the chemistry of various baked goods.

Finally, buy a digital scale accurate to the gram. Real bakers weigh everything. Look for cookbooks with recipes listing weights, not just volume.

ETA: someone above referenced proper equipment...other than an accurate scale, you don't need much at all to bake yeast breads. A big mixing bowl, your hands, maybe a wooden spoon and a dough scraper. It's a very, very low tech endeavor requiring few special tools. You don't even need loaf pans. 5,000+ years ago, people baked bread that we would recognize today....with no more equipment than a basin, their hands, and a heat source.

One final suggestion: King Arthur Flour's website LINK is a great source of recipes, with a hotline staffed by people who know how to bake. The Fresh Loaf www.thefreshloaf.com is another good web resource for bread baking.

Not very adept, but I can manage a pizza crust, pie crust, muffins/quickbreads. I think I made scratch cinnamon pecan rolls once. I would love to learn to make a nice crusty baguette.

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Baked things will put weight on you like crazy.

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But baked goods are possibly the easiest thing to give away. No one (aside from the gluten free) will turn down a cupcake, loaf of homemade bread, coffeecake, scone, biscuit, etc. You can easily become the office hero by showing up every couple of weeks with a baked treat. You get to keep practicing, the coworkers get a little nosh. Everybody wins. Do the same for the neighbors, and they'll happily watch your house/water the plants/feed the cat when you go out of town.