Thomas Keller - Bouchon Bakery
Pierre Hermes - Pastries and Pastry Chef Little Black Book , perfect work book, good if you don’t need visual aids.
We held an adoptiversary party for our dog since we don't know her birthday. We made dog treats and invited friends over to bring their dogs. We grilled some food for the humans. The pup had a lot of fun with the other dogs and people.
The dog treats we made were from the Bouchon cookbook. I will caution that most of the recipes in the cookbook are rather complex, but they are all very delicious.
Yes, definitely mass. You can get even more than from your cast iron buy placing a sheet pan at the bottom with bricks (as mentioned above) or, as in Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery, rocks and chains on it. Not that you may want to do this, but they also use a stream machine (water gun) to shoot water onto the preheated tray (at a safe distance) in order to get a ton of steam in the oven right at the start of bread baking.
Bouchon Bakery, for example, has very precise quantities by weight.