What Music to Listen to While You’re Baking

You’ve got all your ingredients. Your measuring spoons are laid out. The timer goes off, telling you the oven is preheated as you slide up to the counter and get ready to sift your flour dial into these tunes to keep your bread game strong.

We’ve compiled our Baker’s Dozen of the best baking music that’ll have you producing smooth, fluffy loaves in just under an hour.

1. Shallow – Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper

Baking bread is a process. It requires time, patience, and a controlled environment.

Grab your tried and true deep pan to get the best bread loaf and steer clear of shallow pans made for cake and casserole baking.

Old yeast or too much humidity in the air is going to affect the rise of your bread. Nobody wants a shallow loaf.

2. God’s Plan – Drake

Running down your recipe list, you stop at the instructions on how to make a yeast slurry. Yeast is the driving force in conventional bread making that gives bread lift.

Without the chemical reaction between yeast and sugar, you’ll be making a dense bread flavored sheet cake. You mix the warm water, sugar, and freeze-dried yeast and step back to leave the process in the hands of God.

3. Say Something – Justin Timberlake featuring Chris Stapleton

You got your slurry. Your flour has been weighed. Your wooden spoon gets stuck in the mix, so it’s time to get your hands dirty and mix all that good stuff together.

The sticky flour and water mixture clings to your hands, and you almost find your rhythm while you squish and mix. Eventually, a lump ball of dough forms, but it is looking pretty stringy and misshapen, and you think to yourself, maybe I want something I just can’t have.

4. Run the World (Girls) – Beyoncé

You’ve rolled your dough ball into a long tube and laid it out in the bottom of your well-greased bread pan. You cover your sad, lumpy loaf with a dish towel, find a warm place in your house without a draft to let your bread rise. A wash of accomplishment pours over you. You’ve conquered bread, come at me world, I’m ready for you!

5. Angel From Montgomery – Bonnie Raitt

Sneaking a peak under the dishtowel, you see that the bread is starting to rise. You send up a silent prayer that you got your ingredients right and that the bread continues to rise, light and airy like the feather of an angel’s wing.

6. Perm – Bruno Mars

You’ve done the work. Now it’s time to throw some perm on your attitude so you can get to that silky smooth bread you’ve been dreaming of.

7. Tennessee Whiskey – Chris Stapleton

You’ve got 30 minutes to kill while your bread rises, and while you hope for a beautiful smooth loaf that is just the right amount of sweet you dream of melting better on its warm crumb and enjoying that first bite.

Nothing left to do, but cross your fingers, grab the whiskey bottle off the top shelf, and sip a glass waiting for that perfect rise.

8. Lions – Skillet

Your bread has doubled in size, and it’s ready for the heat. You’ve got no fear, and you have embraced this bread baking channeling your inner grandmother to help you get to the finish line. Unafraid, you slide that pan of risen dough into the hot oven and slam the door.

You know you’ll rise victorious.

9. Coming in Hot – Andy Minho, Lacrae

Getting caught up in cleaning up your floury mess, the timer goes off, and time for the test. You go to grab your bread from the oven, realizing you forgot your oven mitt and scream, “this bread is coming in hot!” Just before the pan falls to the floor and out rolls your loaf. Coming in hot!

10. Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan

You watch your beautiful loaf roll like a stone across your kitchen floor, and before you can dive to save it, your dog swoops and grabs it with his slobbery mouth. How does it feel to watch all your hard work and patience vanish as your dog begins to devour your precious loaf before it even has a chance to rest on the counter?

11. Billie Jean – Michael Jackson

With a broken heart and broken dreams, you realize this bread is not the one, and you’ve got to be careful who you love and loaf with and

12. Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash

It’s time to change your name and go off the grid, you’ve burnt your loaf, the dog ate most of it, and all that is left is hard as nails and although you don’t get to “cash” in on all your hard work this time, there is hope for the loaves of the future.

13. Uprising – Muse

Though this attempt may have been a failed loaf, you’ll rise up victorious when you set your mind to attempt bread baking again.

You could step back, leaving the bread baking to the professionals. Years of baking knowledge and science goes into making one, single, perfect cube of bread, raising it up from just an ordinary lump of dough.