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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
For the professional, or near-professional, March 7, 2004
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.
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