Bake Book
A baking app for home bakers, made by a home baker. Log bakes, save recipes, and connect.
APP STORE↗
WHY I BUILT IT
Home baking is my favorite hobby. I bake most weekends, but I never really had a good place to keep a record of my baking. Instagram is the obvious place for this, but I found myself only posting when something turned out really well. So I wanted a more personal baking diary, and a baking-specific way of logging that was not just a social media post.
WHAT I WOULDN’T COMPROMISE ON
Scrapbook, baking-journal branding was the point. I wanted recording a bake to be fun, and for home bakers to be proud of themselves when looking back on their bakes. So I drew most of the icons and illustrations myself, and each page reads like something pasted into a notebook rather than a form you filled in.
A website would have been quicker, but I was adamant it had to be an app. Baking is a hobby, so what makes a journal stick is being nudged and being one tap away (push notifications and a home-screen icon).
A big reason people abandon recipe apps is the typing. So I wanted to offer two ways that aren’t typing: paste a link (e.g. a YouTube video) and extract the recipe information, or paste a block of text (like a ChatGPT recipe) and automatically parse. The recipe saving needed to be as easy as possible.
WHAT WAS HARD
I’d never built an app, so there were some ups and downs. I started in Flutter so I could be cross-platform, and it turned out to be harder than just focusing on one platform. So I dropped it and went iOS-only.
Someone who primarily bakes sourdough has a very different baking process from someone who makes cakes. A log that tries to serve all home baking is nearly impossible, so while I had a ton of ideas at first, I stuck to the basics.