The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook

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.

Great book on making the art of French pastries. Great book with pictures and easy to read writing style of author. Excellent on additional information on buying and using best ingredients. Also learn from Chapter 1 because these are the fundamentals, then master them and move on to the next chapters. I was deeply engaged making puff pastry, cream anglaise and detrempe (making croissants and chocolate croissants). Learning Chapter 1 recipes take time and patience. And practice makes perfect.There are even pictures and paragraphs explaining how to pipe pastries, macarons and other fillings and frost your pastries like a pro pastry chef.Excellent book to invest, all you need is desire, passion, patience and preserverance to learn "The Art of French Pastry". Even a home baker can do this.After a year buying a Kindle version of this book, i bought the hard copy and have tried the recipes on this book. Everything here is amazing. this is a book for the adverturous home cooks who want to learn the art of making French pastries, especially in the region of Alsace. The author is a respected teacher all over the world and his stories, passion and his recipes speaks for itself. It offers the readers delight and also the know-how and some tips and secrets of achieving these delicious morsels. So far, I have tried many recipes in this book by going through the pastry fundamentals, and moving on to what I want to make on the succeeding pastries like tarts, cookies, cakes and the last chapter. all of my friends, family and co-workers tell me these are fantastic. Some of the pastries that I have tried were memorable from my earlier years in Hong Kong where my dad's expat friends would bring sweets and gifts when he host parties. But anyway, I highly recommend this book if you want to learn the Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer.

This is an absolutely fantastic book on the fine art of French pastry! Chef Pfeiffer gives the reader all the tips and tricks necessary to turn out very fine pastries. As well, he weaves in little stories of his own life as a pastry chef that elevate this book above the basic pastry texts. The stories are the hidden gems in the book! Do not be dismayed that this book seems a little technical. The science presented is in fact very basic and easy to understand, but it is completely necessary in order to achieve consistency and to avoid mistakes. As an example, all recipes have ingredients scaled by weight. Finally, a pastry text that drives home the need for proper scaling! No more cups, teaspoons, etc. Far too many baking books still use flour measured in volume with no explanation of the exact technique, the result being unreproducible results or a failed recipe. Not so this text!I consider myself a pastry hobbyist. I am not an expert and I do not bake every day. However, when I do bake I want consistent results. To that end I have taken a fair number of pastry classes. This book is the next best thing to taking a class from a master. And the best thing about this master is that he knows his audience, because he's taught pastry novices for years. He already knows your potential mistakes and points them out before you make them! So do yourself a favor. If you enjoy French pastries and you want to improve your technique, then buy this book! It is the only book on French pastry that you will ever need.