Customer Reviews

Confessions of a French Baker: Breadmaking Secrets, Tips and Recipes

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was apprehensive from the moment I saw this book. The author and the book description make it as if whoever goes into the Auzet bakery can come out with all sorts of secrets for breadmaking. Anyone who knows French bakers and patissiers, knows that they very rarely if ever give away their secrets, especially not to tourists that come for a visit! And true to my apprehensions I was dissappointed when I received this book. All the recipes,and they are not many, are with the straight method, ie using yeast not a sourdough or ferment, and they take from start to finish approximately two hours! Well this is just not enough time to develop the proper flavour of bread! I am a professional baker/patissier and these recipes are the ones I first learned in baking school. Mix the dough, let it double, shape it , proof it and bake it. Nice looking bland bread. Either Mr Auzet took the author for a ride or the author is taking us! There is no way to produce great tasting artisan bread using these methods. Now if you want to get this book here's a tip from me: Mix the dough as per the recipe but put only 1/2 to 2/3 the amount of yeast given, then put it in a shallow plastic container cover it with its cover and place it in the refrigerator overnight. This will give the yeast time to develop the flavour of the dough. In the morning take the dough out of the container and continue with the rest of the recipe method.

I purchased this book because I've read Peter Mayle's books & have been to the region he's mentioned & have enjoyed his stories. I also bought this book because I needed some light-hearted reading. I was disappointed at first, having read it in one night. It's mostly about making bread. I thought it would be more substantive. But my husband bought me a KitchenAid mixer as a result of it, thinking it would cheer me up, & that I'd make him some bread! I made the first recipe tonight, the baguettes - I added a some dried herbs to it(no fresh available) & the loaves were absolutely superb! I love bread, and having made it for so many years, I had my doubts about this recipe, & the mixer as well. I've always kneaded by hand. This recipe is a real winner - the texture & flavor is what I've never before been able to achieve. Read the book, make the recipes (well I've only tried one) - you'll feel like you're in Provence, breaking bread with friends, having a glass of wine, enjoying life, with the best bread you can imagine!

It is a small volume of explanations to successful breadmaking from an owner of a Provencal bakery, written by an adept enthusiast. The author is witty and the baker is skillful and sharing. Along with useful breadmaking customs are anecdotes on origins, for example, the invention of croissants. Also included are cultural beliefs. A brief lesson in bread-related French words could also be obtained. It concludes with a wine suggestion for each type of bread. The recipes are easy to follow. A lot of practice might be required for best results and this little book proves handy.

I am a home baker with a few bread baking books "under my belt". I also love books that tell us about simple pleasures of life. Among them, other books by Peter Mayle.

When buying Confessions... I expected a few stories about the bakery, along the lines of Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking, or Joe Ortiz's The Village Baker. I thought I would find a few trade tricks, or "secrets" that will help me bring out flavour more successfully. And, maybe as a bonus, one or two new recipies, not to mention the atmosphere that was in some earlier works by that author.

If you just began your bread baking adventure, you will not learn from this book enough to succeed. Try Joe Ortiz's The Village Baker, or Daniel Leader's Bread Alone, or Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb, or The Bread Baker's Apprentice (for the more detail oriented).

If you read a few bread baking books, and you tried several recipies, you will not learn much from this one. It focuses on direct method and white flour only, so ... look elsewhere.

If you think it will be just a nice story about good life in the south of France, a bit like Year in Provence, or Good Year (the film, not the book)... look elsewhere.

It's not even a good read. It seems a case of an author and publisher milking the former's (ailing ?) brand.

Don't buy it ... sadly look elsewhere.

This small, compact book offers a bit of everything - it's a travel log, a recipe book, and an inside view of a family business. The topic of breadmaking is interesting and the opening chapters are especially fun to read because of Mayle's descriptions. The book feels 'warm' and inviting, even if you don't necessarily want to bake bread. The first few chapters are an introduction to cafe Auzet and the Auzet family, and the subsequent chapters include ways to recreate their famous loaves. The book also includes a chapter on choosing the appropriate wine for each bread type. The book was an easy and quick read. I miss Mayle's travel-fiction work and, although the book is cute, it doesn't have broad appeal.

What is more French than bread. This small guide is perfect for the beginner and for the expert. Wonderfully written by Peter Mayle, capturing all the amience and quirks of Gerard Auzet and his bakery (who we met in Mayle's first book, A Year in Provence). The secrets are not so much secrets, if you have baked bread before, but insistence on doing the job right because the making and eating of bread is in effect a minor religion for the French and with Auzet a priest. If only the book could come with the smell of baking bread--that would be delicieux for sure.

Peter Mayle's "Confessions of a French Baker," is a slim, cute little book that spans 89 pages and with its compact pages, extremely wide margins, and larger typeface can easily be read from cover to cover within 10 - 15 pages (and no, i'm not exaggerating).

While the title of this book suggests deep insight into the secret methodology of a world-class French bakery what Mayle provides is an extremely limited and basic examination of Gerard Auzet's boulangerie - Chet Auzet. While this book does provide a handful of bread recipes and suggested wine pairings for particular style of loaves - the actual narrative content could easily be crammed into a pamphlet.

This book will certainly appeal to fans of Mayle as well as Francophiles or bread/bakery afficionados and due to its elegant design would be well suited as a gift item as well. If you are puchasing for yourself in hopes of gaining further insight into baking technique you may be somewhat disappointed however.

A confession: I like little cookbooks -- little books that make their case in maybe a hundred pages and sometimes as few as 20 or 30 recipes. I have a bunch of them -- things like A Cookbook for a Man Who Probably Only Owns One Saucepan and A Little Japanese Cookbook and even Julia's Kitchen Wisdom. Little cookbooks in a way are like sonnets, haiku, and other forms of constrained poetry -- the point is to be made in as concise a manner as possible, getting across the required knowledge while still bringing a bit of artistry into it.

That is what Peter Mayle's bread book is -- not a comprehensive reference like The Italian Baker or a technical book like I'm Just Here for More Food, just a short and sweet study of the basics of one bakery in Provence. It is a spectacularly quick read, and even at its brief length and highly aerated page layout, still seems a bit padded. And yet, in its short length, you still find all the basics of French breadmaking as well as a brief exposition of the workspace and business of Mayle's coauthor Gérard Auzet, as well as an impassioned defense of artisanal baking over the convenient but unloved French supermarket baguette. The really nice thing is that the book uses weight measurements like a good baking book should and a professional always does; my edition (a UK printing picked up on a remainder rack) even includes metric measurements.

"Confessions" is admittedly a bit silly for a title (I think Mayle was trying to evoke Rousseau for some reason or another), but let it slide. The book could perhaps be a bit more visual, but as I've often stressed in my cookbook reviews, it really all depends on your learning style. (A proper index would be nice as well, but the recipe listing in the back is usable enough.) What I do find unfortunate is the cover price; you certainly shouldn't be looking for this in a bookstore at full retail. However, for an amateur bread baker, can you really pass up a whirlwind course in breadmaking in only 16 recipes?

I felt I had to submit a review after reading the comments from some of the folks who are doubters about whether the recipes really work. I had the pleasure of being part of a small group of eight (four Americans and four Australians) who had the privilege of visiting Chez Auzet and working with Gerard Auzet in the back of his boulangerie. We made the walnut and red wine bread, and the green and black olive bread. Both were made exactly according to the recipes in the book, and both were fantastic. Mr. Auzet really stressed the importance of getting the temperatures of everything just right, and these careful instructions are in the book as well. Mr. Auzet also taught us to make the little canoe-shaped cookies that are emblematic of the region. Mr. Auzet had the books for sale in his shop and he very kindly autographed each one as we waited for the bread to rise and then bake, completing his autograph with a little drawing of a basket of bread. He showed genuine interest in passing along the "secrets" of breadmaking. I have since tried the recipes at home, with care to buy the recommended flour, and get the temperatures right,and so forth, and the bread turned out just as good.

After our bread baking lessons, we got to take our bread with us as we proceeded to our next stop - a wine tasting at a local vineyard. The smell of that fresh baked bread as we drove to the winery about made us crazy-hungry, so we brought our bread in with us and shared it with everyone - it was wonderful with the wine.

For me, "Confessions of a French Baker" will provide memories of a wonderful trip to Provence, and a souvenir of time spent with a very kind gentleman who loves to teach others the pleasures of his craft...whether in person, or through his little book. Merci M. Auzet!!

Author Peter Mayle shared news of a beloved local Provence French bakery, Chez Auzet, in a prior coverage: here several hundred visits later he and baker Gerard Auzet collaborate in a celebration of baking, blending recipes for sixteen kinds of bread - all packed with professional insider's baking tips for success - with a history and survey of Azuet bakers and achievements. CONFESSIONS OF A FRENCH BAKER: BREADMAKING SECRETS, TIPS, AND RECIPES may look small and unassuming beside weighty and larger-sized bread cookbooks, but don't let its size fool you: packed within its pages are decades of baking wisdom competitors can't match for tone, content and insights.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch