Customer Reviews

Cresci: The Art of Leavened Dough

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a beauty and I've only begun to experiment with the recipes but I must say one thing - the book lacks detailed instructions for the average home baker. I don't know if this has anything to do with the book being translated from italian to english, but inexperienced bakers will be left feeling a bit perplexed by the 'spartan' instructions. The measurements are also in metric units instead of the standard U.S. cups and tablespoons.

Being that I have baking knowledge from working in bakeries and restaurants, my personal opinion of this book is that it's worth the 60 or 70 euros that my husband spent on purchasing it from the publisher. My only regret is that it was not the italian edition. I am tending to believe that perhaps some key steps in procedures may have been lost in the translation.

I am a Co-worker of "Young Chef" who posted a review on here of this book. Looking at his copy(and hoping I can buy a copy for myself soon!), I can also say that this book is NOT for your average homebaker. The author is a master baker and assumes that you have soild experience and knowldge on yeasted doughs.

If you do not have a decent level of skill at making yeasted doughs, you might want to gain that before you buy this book. It will be a waste of money otherwise.

I cannot wait to get my own copy and start making recipies out of it!

And yes-everything is by weight, as all pros do their baking by weight as it is more accurate and consistant. You will need a scale.(something else I need to get..)

This book while NOT for home bakers is great ONLY if you are a professional baker can understand the meathods inside it. Why an average home baker would spend 150$ on a book that they know nothing about is odd to me its all in metric but thats what pro bakers use, cups are not accurate enough, I love it.

as a baker by trade, there is a few to know about this book that A some recipes for example foccacia's are more in the line of sweet dough then the average foccacia's that people usually make.B the standard bread dough recipes are pretty straight forward then I expected,compared to Nancy silvertons((breads from the la brea bakery) or sally fields (the Italian baker)but still good in taste.and B from the pannetone to the Impasto speciale are perfectly done well and well executed,I guess you seem to expect that from a master pastry chef. if your a home baker best to start investing into a digital scale and also ingredients eg:egg yolks and alot of them and butter aswell but this is the price you pay to have real bread at home from Italy,and as for supermarket bakers good luck. artisan/pasty chefs you'll probably breeze through this book with ease.

p.s if you buy this book do alot of research before you start creating one of Iginio Massari's recipes cause the last thing you want is expensive ingredients
thrown to waste