I can recommend two books: Tartine I and Italian Baker. There are many like this but these two I used and liked.

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118...

https://www.amazon.com/Italian-Baker-Revised-Countryside-Its...

If you have a Masterclass subscription, they have a course on making sourdough bread (from the owner of a Parisian bread shop that has been making sourdough bread for some >100 years).

Or Joshua Weissman has you covered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJpIzr2sCDE

Hmm, that's a difficult question for me because I learnt using some books by a blogger called Lutz Geißler [1], but I'm afraid they're written in German and there's no translated version. I haven't yet found any resources written in English that fulfill my personal checklist, but that's probably because I haven't looked hard enough.

My recommendations on what to look for:

1. This should be rather obvious, but nevertheless: Avoid bread baking machines. They are trading a lot of quality, customizability and enjoyment for a little convenience.

2. Avoid the temptation of recipes that promise fast results. As a rule of thumb: If the recipe calls for an entire or even multiple packages of yeast and proofing time is less than an hour, the recipe is trading all the flavor in exchange for fast results. Tiny amounts of yeast (seriously, 0.1g of fresh yeast is a common occurence) and proofing time measured in many hours or even days (in the fridge) are a requirement for good bread.

But don't worry if the proofing time is that long: You're not actually working during the proofing time - while proofing, the dough is working for you! With a little planning, most recipes can be integrated into the working day.

However, the recipes are not everything. The reason I personally like Geißler's approach to baking is that it embodies the rather scientific craft of baking: Essentially, you have a number of parameters (proofing time, dough temperature, flour composition) that all influence the final bread. Geißler explains the consequences of adjusting these parameters, which allows you to actually understand what's happening inside the dough. Ideally, you shouldn't blindly follow the recipe's instructions, but rather observe the actual progress of the dough and accordingly.

For example, imagine your recipe calls for 90 minutes of final rise time (after bulk fermentation and shaping) at 20-22 °C. However, your room temperature is significantly higher at the moment. Instead of waiting the full 90 minutes, you check on the dough after 60 minutes. Using the finger test (pressing a finger into the dough and checking how far it rebounds), you determine the dough is not yet ready and give it another ten minutes.

It is precisely this controllable, observable and empirical process that I like about bread baking.

[1] https://www.ploetzblog.de/