Professional Baking, 5th Edition [Hardcover]

Wayne Gisslen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2008 | ISBN-10: 047178348X | ISBN-13: 978-0471783480 | Edition: 5th

Wayne Gisslen's Professional Baking, long the standard for bakers learning their craft, illuminates the art and science of baking with unmatched comprehensiveness and clarity. Packed with close to 900 recipes, this Fifth Edition continues to cover the basics of bread and cake making while also presenting higher-level techniques such as pastry, chocolate, and sugar work. Balancing theory and practice, Professional Baking gives you the understanding and fundamental skills you need to progress and develop in a successful baking career.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

In baking, professionals distinguish themselves by achieving consistently great results. Getting these results takes more than just following recipes. It takes really knowing your ingredients, how to best combine them, and how they perform in the heat of the oven. It also takes understanding such areas as bakeshop equipment and mathematics. So if you're serious about baking, you need a broad, deep knowledge of the craft.

Wayne Gisslen's Professional Baking is unmatched in covering the art, science, and skills of baking practice. It has served for many years as the cornerstone guide for baking and pastry professionals, serious home bakers, and culinary students, giving them the know-how and methods to take their technique to the next level. Now in its Fifth Edition, this peerless resource gives you a complete guide to sustained excellence in your baking.

The book gives clear, detailed information on selecting the proper ingredients, mixing and baking techniques, makeup and assembly, presentation, and more. Reflecting current trends, this revised and updated edition includes new material on baking for special diets including low-fat, low-sugar, gluten-free, and dairy-free diets. There's also expanded coverage of professionalism, baking science, and ingredients. More than 775 color photographsillustrate ingredients and step-by-steptechniques as well as dozens of finished dishes.

Inside you'll find an encyclopedic array of close to 900 classic and creative recipes to explore, ranging from basic cr?pes and puff pastry to intriguing variations on the familiar, such as Sachertorte and Peach Napoleon.

Filled with the best practices and techniques that have been used to educate a generation of bakers, and presented in an easy-to-navigate layout, Professional Baking, Fifth Edition is the key to creating consistently high-quality baked goods with the artistry of a true professional. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

The new edition of the classic baking text

Wayne Gisslen's Professional Baking, long the standard for bakers learning their craft, illuminates the art and science of baking with unmatched comprehensiveness and clarity. Packed with close to 900 recipes, this Fifth Edition continues to cover the basics of bread and cake making while also presenting higher-level techniques such as pastry, chocolate, and sugar work. Balancing theory and practice, Professional Baking gives students both the understanding and fundamental skills they need to progress and develop in a successful baking career.

This Fifth Edition includes:

• New recipes and dozens more revised and improved

• More than 150 new photographs

• A new recipe management software program, Wiley CulinarE-Companion, that features user-friendly navigation, flexibility, and robust content

• More detailed information on controlling gluten development, the baking process, and basic yeast dough techniques

• A new chapter on baking for special diets, including low-fat, low-sugar, gluten-free, and dairy-free diets

• New sidebars explaining the history and cultural background of various bakery products, as well as details concerning specialty equipment, ingredients, nutrition, and other topics of interest

• Revised and enlarged chapter on ingredients, including more detailed information on all catego-ries of ingredients

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons; 5th edition (May 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047178348X
• ISBN-13: 978-0471783480
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 1.4 x 10.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Professional Cooking > Professional

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Baking Book Out There April 26, 2009

By Mark D Burgh

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The new edition of Wayne Gisslen's Professional Baking is a make-over, and a good one. Obviously pointed towards the advanced amateur more than previous editions, Gisslen's book gives step-by-step instructions that never fail to produce good product. In older editions, the formulae were professionally scaled, making small batches difficult to produce but not impossible. The new edition starts with small batches, and then provides the large batches in the back. I have to say this new edition is an improvement, with big bright pictures, interesting and complex formulae, and down-to-earth instructions most people can handle. If you buy only one baking book, I think this should be the one.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The textbook for Le Cordon Bleu-USA pastry chef program... June 28, 2010

By PastryChefSuzy

Format:Hardcover

This is an excellent book. Many of the recipes are from original the Le Cordon Bleu (Paris)archives. I'm a grad of the Le Cordon Bleu-USA Baking and Pastry program, and this was our primary textbook.

A caveat for the home chef: This book is formatted for the professional pastry chef in that the majority of the recipes give the quantities for the ingredients in METRIC weight, as well as in "baker's percentages" - rather than by quantity (as in: cups/teaspoons/tablespoon/ozs.) - so you'll want to have a kitchen scale handy to make good use of this book, especially if you plan to use it at home.

Also: Le Cordon Bleu's version of "baker's percentages" differs from the version used in some of the Culinary Institute of America (a.k.a)the "C.I.A.")textbooks, AND the C.I.A. textbook also gives their weights U.S. "lbs./ozs.", rather than in metric. This was a surprise to me as well, and so I've learned to double-check...

(SHEESH!: Am I the only one old enough to remember back when the U.S. was supposed switch to metric like the whole rest of the world - or is it just me? ;-)

- The good news is that small kitchen scales are now easily available inexpensively online, in restaurant supply stores, and in some retail kitchenware stores. *Make sure you get one that can be set to metric weight (grams) and not only in lbs./ozs., or it'll make it much more difficult to use this excellent book, especially at home.

BTW: The other great thing about this book is that once you learn the basic principles, as well as the basic master recipes in this book, you can bake like a pro, and you too can have the pleasure of laughing your *whatever* off when "Iron"/"Top"/"Pro"/"Impossible", etc. "savory" chefs on TV cooking shows and contests freak out or cry like babies at the prospect of having to bake a cake or make a simple dessert like a pastry chef - or even like your grandma...

So hey you "pro" TV chef-type guys BobbyMikeyAnthony, and that other guy who didn't cook for the Queen of England after all: How about some props and respect to us pastry chefs - AND to your grandma!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Baking for dummies March 20, 2011

By mafiaboy

Format:Hardcover

I was excited to see that this book was cheaper than what they were offering at my school. I looked at the reviews for the book and I can understand the very few negative reviews that was written for this book. First one I read was from the person that lived in K zoo Michigan we are most likely in the same program and I understand frustrations there, baking is not for everybody doesn't mean you have to take it out on the book though. The next review I read was about having to flip back and forth for larger quantity I believe is what the person was trying to complain about key word: trying, how hard is it to turn pages? lazy,lazy, lazy it's a shame when we can only complain about mundane things am I right? The couple of last ones I read was on not receiving the book itself, so I cannot really say anything about those except there is no 24th month or 20th month for that matter, my guess is that was too far away for U.S. shipping standards. This book was very helpful to me in my culinary class and I found many great recipes. It was easy to read and use. The historical significance in the beginning was actually pretty interesting. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the pursuit of a career in baking.