Customer Reviews

Professional Baking

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I also had to purchase this book for culinary school. While this book can be difficult to understand, the quality of the instructor has a great deal to do with the user's comprehension of the subject matter. I find this an excellent book and continue to use it today (because I know how to make it work for me).

NOTE: The formulas in this book work, provided you have had proper instruction in how to use them, and in how to use Baker's Math to increase and reduce the yields.

This is another of the books I use as reference for my cooking school. It contains recipes from Le Cordon Bleu schools and recipes from America. Most of the recipes are for large quantities and it is definately not a book for the home baker, this is a great reference book to be used in a professional pastry kitchen.
I particularly like this book because it gives you a basic recipe for let's say a bavarois cream, and then it gives you ten other variations (chocolate, coffee, strawberry, etc) that you can make by changing or adding one or two ingredients.
The instructions are clear and easy to follow.
I highly reccomend this book to anyone who is thinking of baking seriously.

If you are looking for good recipes, then this book is not for you.
But if you just want to know how to operate a bakery or just want to have an idea of how to bake and decorate basic recipe then this book is for you.
The recipes are to be modified by you so that it can taste better. What is written in the book is just a general way of how to make it.
The good part is the part about how to decorate a cake, how to place the filling and layer the cake traditionally.

All in all i would say it is a good book if you are looking for theories and facts in general.

Honestly, I found this textbook to be hard to follow, difficult to understand, and many of the recipes and formulas did not work. Also, there were not many photos, and the diagrams were confusing. This certainly is not for the home chef, and I hesitate to recommend this to professional students either.

this book is an atrocity to the pastry chef, i don't know about you but i want to see what i'm cooking and this book has very few pictures, and the recipes are completely wrong i've used this book in culinary school, 70% of the things we cooked were absolutely flavorless, and just plain didn't work! and the only reason i still have it is to occupy space in my library, i highly recommend Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas, or Baking and Pastry by the CIA, and for professionals Bo Fribergs books The Professional Pastry Chef, and Advanced Professional Pastry Chef