Mastering the Art of French Pastry [Hardcover]

Bruce Healy (Author), Paul Bugat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1984

An illustrated course with Drawings by Paul Bugat and Photographs by Peirre Ginet.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 450 pages
• Publisher: Barrons Educational Series Inc; First Edition edition (September 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812054563
• ISBN-13: 978-0812054569
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 5.6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,029,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Professional Learning Tool, January 22, 2008

By 

jerry i h (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mastering the Art of French Pastry (Hardcover)

There are not many books that have information suitable for the baking & pastry professional or student, and this is one of the few. This 1984 book is out of print and is in such high demand, that used copies have sometimes gone for more than a c-note (hint to book publishers). The advanced home baker will also profit: tired of buying store bought puff pastry for your apple turnovers? This book will show you how to do it. This book is not one for beginners: you need to know your way around the oven and a rolling pin first.

It covers classic French pastry exclusively. In fact, it is a compilation of the items prepared at one Patisserie in France, Clichy, which is owned by one of the authors; therefore, the recipes are rather selective. It begins with Genoise and ends with croissants. Example: for pate brisee, puff paste, and croissant, the author consistently insists on fraisage; no other methods are recommended or even mentioned. Each recipe will explicitly state which method(s) are appropriate: hand, mixer, food processor. Each recipe clearly lists the yield. I only miss an equipment mise-en-place. I cannot shake the feeling that several celebrated cookbook authors cribbed B&P recipe procedures from this book un-attributed. The authors assume that you will bake tarts in a ring directly on a sheet pan and not in a tart pan, which I agree with wholeheartedly.

All procedures and recipes are explained in complete, painful detail step by step. The basics chapters has all the information the student needs to know, and is pretty much the same information you get when going to cooking school. I find this to be a reliable and useful learning tool, and a valuable addition to your baking & pastry reference shelf. The goal of the authors is to take proven, professional recipes and scale them down for use in the home kitchen, and they succeeded very well. The recipe amounts are for one cake or tarte, precursors that are just enough for a couple of home-sized recipes; whether the typical home cook can correctly execute the directions is another matter.

The first part (130 pages) covers basics: pastry dough, cake batters, creams, and glazes. The second part (200 pages) has recipes using components from part one. The third part (100 pages) covers equipment and ingredients. The beginning of each part also has a mini TOC.

The only problems I have with this book are in the "Equipment" section. Each mold described should have a measurement and a picture. Most of the information on who makes what is no longer correct. Humbly disagree about their opinion of American cardboard cake circles and their peculiar (and unobtainable) solution and their opinion on malt extract. I would ignore the section on baking papers and stick to parchment and wax paper; specifically, the authors neglect to mention that papers that contact food should be rated as food-safe.
Big mistakes:
1) "we recommend that natural-finish and anodized aluminum baking sheets and cookie sheets be seasoned in the same way as black steel" (p. 374). Nope.
2) "the griddle as baking sheet" (p. 375). No way.
3) "the SilverStone linings on these griddles should be conditioned by wiping with vegetable oil the first time they are used" (p.375). Again, NO.

Now to be nit-piky. There are color pictures that list what page the recipe is on, but the recipes do not mention that there is a color picture. The line drawings are pretty good, but some of them do not match the text, and it is not clear in some of them what exactly is going on. Either way, there needs to be more of both, since much of what goes on is visually specific, and it is not always clear what the end result should look like. A few times, especially in the cake decorating chapter, faulty grammar caused forced me to re-read the same sentence several times before I understood what the author was trying to say. The color pictures do not always reflect what is going on in the decorating instructions. It has a nifty table matching precursors to recipes; pity it is buried in the back next to the metric conversion tables where you will never find them, rather than next to mini-TOC for Part 1.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If have lots of time and are a chemist at heart, you will make FABULOUS pastries, August 21, 2007

By 

William G. Bohrer "wooboobooboo" (Western Mass) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering the Art of French Pastry (Hardcover)

I borrowed this book from the library when unemployed during the dotcom bust, and made the "Gateau Clichy", sometimes known as an "Opera Cake", and won first prize in a local pastry contest. It was a LOT of work, and you need to be really precise in your weighing an measuring, and cleaning -good marks in college level organic chemistry was a big advantage - but oh MY was it worth it! The house smelled like a French Patisserie all weekend, beautiful smells of rich chocolate and fresh roasted coffee, and the buttercream came out perfectly

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars my best pastry book, April 16, 2009

By 

Dan "Dan" (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mastering the Art of French Pastry (Hardcover)

full of fine arts and wisdom of pastry making.but need some patience to read it and more to make it real.