The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook

Most books on classic French pastry assume far too much knowledge – this one explains properly how to make everything, from basic sponges to elaborate entremets. It's full of tips and tricks to improve your baking, and it also offers gorgeous illustrations and funny stories. It's now in my top 10 baking books, and I have at least a hundred baking books. Really warmly recommended for ambitious bakers.

Good book on french pastry

Bought as a gift for a friend who loves baking! She loves it. Very informative with very nice pictures.

Highly recommend this book. The author explains each step clearly and succinctly. Great images

You need this. If you are into baking; you need this. It's the most detailed baking book I have ever had.

Not very good book....

The Art of French Pastry a good book for learning about patisserie

Excelente libro si estas iniciando en la repostería o si tienes duda sobre cómo funciona la química en la repostería

best ever book...must be in book shelf of a baker

The best part about this book are the author's precise descriptions, the whys and the hows, the warnings about what could and usually does go wrong all based on his many years of experience as a teacher. Some of the recipes are unique or include unique presentation but most of them you can find in other books and overall the variety of recipes is not huge. The value of this cookbook is in the instruction to the fundamentals and the approachable way in which it is presented. I have already learned so much. Take for example, the author's recipe and instructions for Italian meringue. I have had two prior failed attempts with making this recipe, once because my sugar crystalized while cooking and the second time because it was cooked before the whites were ready. With Jacquy Pfieffer's detailed instructions I was able to successfully make this recipe and I now understand how to avoid both of the mistakes leading to my previous failed attempts. To avoid sugar crystalization the author tells us that the sugar should be swirled gently so as not to get too much of it on the sides of the pan and to use a wet brush to wash down the crystals. He says to be generous with how saturated the brush is because it doesn't matter if you add additional water to the pan as it all cooks down anyway. This is exactly why I had trouble before - I attempted to brush down the crystals but was fearful of adding too much water which led to inadequate brushing and ultimately sugar crystalization. He also addressed my second problem on timing with very precise instructions regarding sugar temperature at which to start beating the whites and the beating speed. Other basic recipes I've tried with great success were the tart crust and lemon curd. I used Rose Levy's Beranbaum's recipe for pate sucre in the past but got unsatisfactory results due to the temperature being too high. She says to start with a 425F oven, then switch to 375 after 5 minutes. This resulted in a crust that browned way too quickly around the edges and set very hard. Mr. Pfeiffer tells us to bake at 325 for a longer period of time to encourage water to evaporate without browning leading to a perfectly golden and crumbly crust. Outstanding! I like the organization of this book. Each recipe has a list of ingredients in both metric and volume measures at the top and a list of equipment in a box to the side. Some of the basic recipes that are used repeatedly in multiple recipes are included in the beginning of the book. The paper has a nice quality and the pictures are beautiful though there are not pictures for every recipe. I agree with the other reviewer that noted it would be nice to have additional pictures or line drawings of techniques but that is really my only minus for this book. All in all, I am extremely happy with this purchase. I own a lot of baking books but I think this is going to become my go to manual for most foundational recipes taking over Flo Braker's "The Art of Perfect Baking." I understand this book is nominated for the IACP and the James Beard Award and I hope it wins both of them! UPDATE: Generally, all the recipes I have tried from here have been successful (though a bit too sweet for my taste despite the fact that he says he does not like overly sweet desserts). I did have trouble with the flourless chocolate sponge cake. It came out very flat (less than 1 cm high) and you could barely taste the chocolate (and I used good quality El Rey 65% chocolate). Mine looked nothing like the photo in the book, the one for the hazelnut chocolate verrine, which appears thicker and much darker. Something seems to be off with the recipe. The amount of chocolate (85g) just seems too small to produce a truly chocolatey cake. I remade it using a recipe from another book that uses cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate and it came out much better.

Meine große Leidenschaft ist das Backen, ich backe regelmäßig und habe schon sehr viele verschiedene Rezepte, Backbücher und Tipps ausprobiert. Jetzt war ich auf der Suche nach einer großen Sammlung von Rezepten für Standard-Teige. also zum Beispiel ein gutes Rezept für Sandteig, Zuckerteig, Blätterteig, Mürbeteig, für Brandteig und so weiter. Ich habe dann einige Bücher miteinander verglichen, Patisserie-Standardwerke, dabei war mir die äußere Aufmachung ebenso wichtig wie die Gestaltung der Seiten, außerdem wollte ich Gramm-genaue Rezepte und eindeutige Angaben zu Zutaten, Vorgang und Backzeit. Mir war ebenfalls wichtig, dass es in dem Buch nicht nur Rezepte gibt, sondern auch Tipps und Tricks, schöne Bilder mit Anleitungen und Vorlagen. Nach gefühlten 2 Wochen war ich mir dann sicher, es sollte The Art of French Pastry von Jacquy Pfeiffer sein! Das Buch ist gut gegliedert, am Anfang gibt es alle Rezepte die ich gesucht habe (Blätterteig, Mürbteig, Sandteig etc...) außerdem gibt es ebenfalls Rezepte für Streusel, für Pastry Cream, für Schokomousse, für Ganache mit weißer und dunkler Schokolade etc.. es sind wirklich viele gute Rezepte enthalten, alle mit einem Verweis auf Rezepte die man damit machen kann, die auch im Buch stehen. (Weiter hinten gibt es dann eigene Rezepte, gefüllte Brandteigbällchen, Kuchen, besondere Kunstwerke, etc...) Ein weiterer Pluspunkt sind die exakten Angaben zu den Zutaten, es sind nicht 2 große Eier gefordert, sondern genau 60 gramm und so weiter.. Das war mir persönlich wirklich sehr wichtig, da solche Einheiten wie 2 große Eier, 2 Cups Mehl etc oft nicht ganz richtig sind, bzw. in verschiedenen Regionen anders gemessen werden. Ich habe schon einige Rezepte ausprobiert und mit anderen Rezepten in anderen Büchern verglichen, und die Rezepte aus diesem Buch hier sind JEDES MAL so geworden wie ich sie wollte, selbst beim 8ten Nachbacken war das Ergebnis leicht, fluffig, genau so wie es sein sollte! Im Buch findet man schöne Bilder zu den fertigen Produkten, aber es gibt auch genügend Anleitungen, zb. wie man Brandteig spritzen kann, wie man einen Turm aus Brandteigbällchen zusammensetzt (croque en bouche), wie man Schokolade anständig schmilzt, es gibt auch eine ganze Seite mit ca. 9 Fotos auf denen man sehen kann, wie es aussieht wenn man Eischnee 1,2,... Minuten lang schlägt. Außerdem gibt es jede Menge Tipps, wie man etwas verbessern kann, was man tut wenn etwas nicht gescheit aufgegangen ist etc.. Wer schon immer einmal ein Buch haben wollte, in dem so gut wie alle wichtigen französischen Rezepte enthalten sind, in welchem es gute Tipps und Tricks gibt, schöne Bilder und Rezeptangaben, die TATSÄCHLICH immer funktionieren, der sollte hier unbedingt zuschlagen und sich dieses Buch kaufen!