Au Coeur des Saveurs (English/French Edition) [Hardcover]

Frederic Bau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Brand new

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Montagud Editores; 1 edition (May 1998)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 8472120740
• ISBN-13: 978-8472120747
• Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 9.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,919,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > Libros en español > Cocina > Comidas

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the professional, or near-professional, March 7, 2004

By 

Eric J. Wu (cambridge, ma USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Au Coeur des Saveurs (English/French Edition) (Hardcover)

Contents: cakes and tarts(including orange/tea charlotte, red fruit charlotte, passionfruit/cocount cake, raspberry tart, canneles, banana cake, apple tart, chocolate napoleons, almond milk chocolate cake, and so on). Plated desserts, and chocolate candies. Also, Bau gives his philosophies of desserts.

Good: This book is written at a high level. If you think the books that Dorie Greenspan writes are easy (for example), then this book is your level. Bau gives interesting perspective on making pastry - for example that cakes are hard to handle, and need to have more "safe" recipes", Plated desserts can be more imaginative, storage properties of candies, and so on. There are beautiful photos on every page. The section on making chocolate candies is the best I have seen in this type of book. There are a lot of chocolate candy recipes, including raspberry, praline, white chocolate/coconut, tea/orange, gianduja/orange caramel, and so on. Bau has a lot of info on keeping chocolate in temper, keeping ganache smooth, and so on. This is the book's strongest section.

Bad: If you do not already know how to make pastry, you are toast. For example, this is the recipe for Creme anglaise: "Boil together the milk and cream. Next, and taking the usual precausions, pour over the yolks, previously combined with the sugar. Do not whip. Cook until the preparation coats the spoon, at 84-86 C. Strain and use at once". Many of the cake recipes do not give a baking time! He assumes you already know. All of the recipes are scaled to ~3-4 cakes, so you have to scale down. All of the recipes gives amounts in grams, so you have to know the conversion in your head (ie 200g sugar=1 cup). Some of the ingredients are hard to get (Praline is hard to get, cocoa paste is impossible). Some of the English translations have "character" (ie Praline with 50-70% "fruit" means 50-70% nuts).

Overall:

This is a great book, but if I prefer "The Patisserie of Pierre Herme" (for a book at this level). Don't even think about buying it unless you already know what you are doing. Alternate books at a more intermediate level are "Desserts by Pierre Herme" and "Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme".

Bau's section on plated desserts is more "experimental" than some other books. For example, fruit consomme with ravioli, rhubarb and white chocolate desserts, red pepper compote with almond icecream, and so on. Whether or not you like this depends on your personal taste. Overall, Pierre Herme's book is more "conventional" (which I prefer). Comparing the two a little further, Herme's book is almost 100% recipes, whereas Bau's is 85% recipes, 15% technique and philosophies.

So, if you are looking for a book written at an extremely high level (there are not that many!), I recommend this book. But I recommend Pierre Herme's book first.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational book, but not for the average cook, June 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Au Coeur des Saveurs (English/French Edition) (Hardcover)

The is aboslutely the best pastry and chocolate book I have seen, with incredible recipes and photographs. However, you need to be petty experienced to understand the recipes, which are a bit vague, temperatures given in Centigrade, sometimes not the best translation from French, etc. The book gets knocked down one star for being very unclear on how much each recipe makes, a real issue for the home cook, if not the professional.

11 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellence, outstanding and the finest......, August 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Au Coeur des Saveurs (English/French Edition) (Hardcover)

it is one of the BEST pastry book in the world market now. As a proffesional point of view.