French Pâtisserie: Master Recipes and Techniques from the Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts

must have book for any pastry chef....excellently authored!!! highly recommend it over any celebrity chefs ....

Excellent book !!

Brilliant

Superb!!!!!

great book.

Must have....if u learning serious pastry

The book is beautiful with great step by step illustrations that make it easy to follow regardless of your skill level.I did however find mistakes in the measurements. I made cigarette cookies three times yet they were not coming out as described. I changed the scale and remeasured everything, still no luck. Then I found a French chefs vidéo lesson online and there he explained that the measurement of flour is different. In this book we have 80g of egg whites, 80g of sugar, 80g of flour. When researching after my consistent failures I realised that amount of flour should be halved.Therefore instead of building confidence I am getting confused. Read the recipe here, research online and then stay puzzled as to who to follow for my first attempt.Better checks of measurements will be needed for the next edition.

This cookbook is seriously huge. It's definitely one for the coffee table rather than the book shelf (because it probably won't fit).This is fast becoming my favourite cookbook ever. All bases are covered, from the basics (pastry, creams, biscuits, and loaf cakes) to creations straight out of a professional kitchen. The recipes are split into 3 levels of difficulty - meaning you have 3 different ways of creating staple bakes (lemon tart, chocolate tart, walnut tart, croquembouche, etc.). For example, Level 1 of the walnut tart requires just a sweet short pastry and walnut caramel filling, but Level 3 has sweet walnut pastry, walnut cream, vanilla fudge, caramelised walnuts, and chantilly cream. Level 2 meets them halfway with a walnut genoise sponge, syrup, almond paste crown, and soft caramel.Much of the basics have been covered in similar detail by others, such as Christophe Felder's 'Patisserie: Mastering the Fundamentals of French Pastry' - but Ferrandi show you how to combine the different elements to create some very creative bakes (I can't wait to tackle the praline choux swiss roll!).I have come across 1 or 2 mistakes so far, such as incorrect dimensions for rolling dough out for the sable hollandais (if you go with the dimensions stated, you'll only manage to wrap half the biscuit). But these are only minor. It really is a stunning cookbook.

This book is excellent and anyone who loves cooking desserts and Pastries should buy a copy. It goes from basic to high high end. It teaches you the basics, teaches you about products, such as different types of sugars etc, and gives you recipes in 3 levels easy (!?) intermediate and advanced. Even the easy recipes are of quite an advanced standard if you follow them to the letter. Each recipe gives you the weights in cups, ounces and grams. Also each level of recipe uses similar equipment and ingredients so you don't need to rush out and buy loads of equipment and ingredients straight away you can build it up as you progress and improve. Although one small gripe is that some of the equipment and ingredients for the more advanced recipes can be either a little difficult to get hold of and also quite expensive. But that is only gripe I have, and it isn't much of one really because if you love baking and Pastry you will spend the money and take the time getting the equipment and ingredients. If you could spend the time and money learning and mastering the level 1 recipes and all the techniques in this book then you would have the skills and could possibly work in a pro kitchen (as a Junior) it's that good, trust me, I know, I'm a Pastry Chef.

My French fiancée loved this book. It has all the recipes from all the master patisserie chefs in France and levels of difficulty to ensure no budding baker is thrown into the deep end too quickly. This book has now become her bible. The only downside is the she wants to bake every weekend and my pre wedding diet is suffering.

I love this book. It’s huge with loads of photos. I took one so that you can imagine how the inside looks like. The contents are mainly classic desserts, like macaroons, sponges, brioches, etc. with different variations, i.e: macaroons (about 10 kinds of macaroons are introduced). The basic techniques were introduced as well. However, the one I was looking for, the sauce ingredients, isn’t introduced.