Customer Reviews

Mastering the Art of French Pastry

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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.

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

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

Mastering the Art of French Pastry

This is simply the best French Pastry book ever (and I own many more of them). The recipes and instructions are very easy to follow, interesting to execute, and you won't believe the results ... superb every time. I purchased my copy in 1984, the year it was published, and I continue to be amazed by the end-products. You need to be attentive to having certain pastry equipment -- tarte and Madeleine pans, in particular -- but you should probably have such equipment in your kitchen under any circumstances. Give yourself time to create your masterpieces, too, because some of the recipes have several steps. Once you have mastered the basics, let your creativity kick in. I just did a fruit tarte for Thanksgiving, and now everyone wants the recipe.