8 Best Online Baking Classes of 2026

King Arthur Baking School is the only entry here run by a baking company, and its catalog shows it. The on-demand shop lists 23 classes, from Sourdough for Beginners and Intermediate Sourdough Baking to Extra Flaky Croissants, Classic Macarons at Home, Gluten-Free Bread Baking and a Kids Baking Class. Most cost $40, Cookie Decorating Essentials costs $30, and several were on sale at $32 when we checked. Each class comes with a downloadable recipe workbook, and you can watch it as often as you want; King Arthur guarantees access for at least one year from purchase. The school also runs Live Online classes on Zoom, where you can ask the instructor questions, and in-person classes in Norwich, Vermont and Skagit Valley, Washington, for more than 120 classes in all. The limits are commercial: on-demand sales are final, one purchase covers one student, and the live Zoom schedule was set to resume in November 2026. Bakers who want many topics for one fee will get more classes from Craftsy.

Craftsy gives bakers the most classes for the lowest monthly price on this list. Its Baking category lists 111 classes, and the instructor filter reads like a shelf of baking books: Peter Reinhart, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Jacques Torres, Joanne Chang, Zoë François, Nick Malgieri and Alice Medrich, among others. Topic filters cover bread, pastries, cupcakes, chocolate, cookies and holiday baking, and recent additions include Gemma Stafford's Bold Baking Academy series on French desserts, breakfast doughs and cakes. A separate Cake Decorating library adds buttercream, fondant and cookie decorating classes. On the US App Store, Premium Monthly starts at $7.99 and Premium Yearly at $97.00, though the listing shows several price points. Every class is recorded, so nobody checks your work, and some App Store reviewers say resuming a video where you left off is awkward. For bakers who learn well from video, it is the best value.

MasterClass is for bakers who want to learn from people they have heard of. Apollonia Poilâne, CEO of the Parisian bakery Poilâne, teaches its philosophy and techniques for rustic French breads in 17 lessons that run 3 hours 34 minutes. James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Dominique Ansel teaches his essential techniques for pastries and desserts in what MasterClass calls his first online class. The app adds class guides and offline viewing, and lessons are short enough to watch between steps. The catch for bakers is breadth: one membership unlocks 200+ classes, but only a few of them are about baking, so most of what you pay for is other subjects. On the US App Store the Individual annual plan is $119.99, about $10 a month, with Duo at $179.99 and Family at $239.99. There is no way to ask the instructors about your own loaf, so bakers who want feedback should look at the live options.

Milk Street Cooking School is the best live option for bakers who want both a teacher and a replay. Livestream classes run 60 to 75 minutes on Zoom and cost $29.95, and you can bake along in real time or watch and bake later. Workshops and intensives run 90 to 120 minutes and are capped at 25 attendees for more advanced skills. The November 2026 calendar shows what that means for bakers: an Advanced Sourdough Pastries intensive with Heike Meyer at $249.95, a Savory Scottish Baking class on Scotch pies at $29.95, Thanksgiving Dinner Rolls, and a small group Thanksgiving Pie Bake-Along at $74.95. Every registered attendee gets the recording of the event, and Milk Street also sells pre-recorded livestream classes and self-paced courses. Livestream classes are included in an Insider membership. Baking is one subject among many cuisines, so the calendar will not always have a bread or pastry class in the week you want one.

Udemy is a marketplace, so the right course matters more than the platform. The Baking topic page counts 132,674 learners and links to narrower topics for bread baking, sourdough, cake baking, cake decorating, pastry, cookies and gluten-free baking. Sourdough is the strongest area: the top course, Sourdough Bread Baking 101 by Teresa L Greenway, runs 2.5 hours over 42 lectures and is rated 4.6 from 4,868 reviews, and other sourdough courses run 4 to 5 hours. Every course shows its rating, review count, length and level before you buy, which makes comparing easy. Prices are the confusing part. The website listed top baking courses at $54.99 to $89.99 when we checked, while the US App Store lists Udemy courses from $9.99 with higher tiers. You buy each course once, and there is no live instructor, so Udemy suits a baker who wants one topic covered cheaply rather than a school.

Rouxbe treats baking like a curriculum. Its Introduction to Baking & Pastry course is a 40-hour online course with 20 units, 206 tasks and 219 videos, starting with how to set up a baking and pastry kitchen and moving from the basics to more advanced techniques in pastry, baking and decorating. It costs $399, bought once. For bakers thinking about a career, the Pastry Arts Bundle adds courses designed by The French Pastry School's master bakers in bread baking arts, cake baking and decorating arts, and an introduction to pastry arts, for $2,159. Rouxbe's separate membership is $129 a year with a 7-day free trial and lets members ask professional chef-instructors questions, but its 11 membership courses run from knife skills to fresh pasta, so it is a cooking product first. The price and workload are the trade-off: a home baker who wants one good loaf will spend far less at King Arthur or Udemy.

Domestika is a creative course marketplace, and for baking that means decoration first. A search for baking returns 904 results, and the top of the list is cakes and cookies: Birthday Cake Designs, Cake Design: Modern Decorating Techniques, Floral Cake Design, Decorative Buttercream Flowers for Cake Design, Cookie Decoration with Royal Icing for Beginners and Advanced Techniques for Cookie Decorating. Longer specializations bundle courses, such as Specialization in Creative Cake and Cupcake Decoration and Specialization in Cookie Decoration with Royal Icing Techniques, and guided courses walk beginners through a first decorated cookie. Art of Doughnut Making is one of the few courses about the bake itself. You can buy courses one by one or pay for Domestika Plus, listed at $19.99 for 1 month on the US App Store. Search results also include food illustration and cookbook writing courses, and bread or laminated pastry fundamentals are thin, so bakers who want those should start elsewhere.

Sur La Table runs live online cooking and baking classes on Zoom, and its pricing is built for families. Classes start at $39 per household, and one registration covers everyone cooking with you, so a parent and two children pay the same as one adult. Before class you download a prep packet with the ingredient list, tools and setup notes; during class a professional chef-instructor guides each step in real time and answers questions as you go. Classes typically run 1.5 to 2 hours and are listed in Eastern Time. Payment is due in full at booking, and cancelling at least 48 hours ahead gets you a full refund, a virtual gift card or an exchange, while later cancellations get nothing, though someone else may attend in your place. The weakness for bakers is focus: baking classes share the schedule with cooking and other cuisines, so Sur La Table works best as a fun household baking night rather than a course.