Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft

Like almost all other Culinary Institute of America books, this volume, `Baking and Pastry Mastering the Art and Craft' is primarily written as a textbook for culinary professionals. Even as a textbook, I would not recommend this book to non-professionals as a means of learning how to bake. For baking hobbyists who simply want to learn more in a systematic fashion about baking, I would strongly recommend that they get a copy of Sherry Yard's new book `The Secrets of Baking' and read it from cover to cover.This does not mean this is a poor book. Only that it is pretty seriously oriented to teaching professional pastry chefs. And, there are ways in which professional chefs do things, which are not and should not be done by the home baker who prepares baked goods for their family and friends. The most obvious symptom of this fact is that most recipes are scaled to make many more pieces than a home baker is likely to want, unless they are baking for a church bake sale.This also does not mean that the book has no value for the home baker. If you are a serious baker for your own consumption, this book is an excellent reference for just about any pastry preparation of which you can think. Not only will it have authoritative recipes for staple preparations such as batters, Panna cotta, sabayon, crème broulee, caramel, buttercream, chantilly cream, lemon curd, glazes, royal icing, pate brisee, pate a Choux and dozens of other standard recipes, it will have recipes for some preparations for which you may have a difficult time finding any place else. My favorite discovery is a recipe for strudel. I have made strudel with frozen philo dough, but I am not very happy with the result. But, I really like good strudel, so now all I have to do is find a counter large enough to prepare it.Another serious asset in this book for the home baker is its explanation of why baking processes work the way they do. The explanations are very practical, generally easier to understand than the explanations you may find in a book by Harold McGee. The only puzzle I found in the book's background information is the fact that they said that whole wheat flour has a higher protein content than general purpose flour, yet GP flour must be added to whole wheat to provide enough gluten to produce a good rise from yeast. I suspect the answer is that much of the protein in whole-wheat flour is of a type that simply does not form glutinous strands. But, that has nothing to do with your baking techniques.As a serious textbook, I would strongly recommend that anyone who is seriously considering a career as a pastry chef read this book from cover to cover, skipping particular recipe details on this first pass. This read will certainly show that professional baking requires a lot of practice and a lot of knowledge and a lot of work.Getting back to the home baker, I would generally refer to this book whenever I simply could not find a recipe in any other source or a recipe is not working out for me, or I remember preparing something from an issue of Gourmet from three years ago and I forgot the recipe. These are all situations where I would run to this book before consulting anything else. I would also consult this book for tips if I am creating a new recipe and I wish to use a standard streusel topping in the recipe. Once I was more experienced with artisinal breads after going to school with either Peter Reinhart or Nancy Silverton, I would be more than happy to consult this book for the recipe for one of the very many types of breads in the book. It seems to pretty much cover everything from brioche to pretzels.This book does not have everything, but then, no book on baking has everything. It has no recipes for a Hungarian nut cake or funnel cake or snickerdoodle cookies or Russian Easter bread. But it certainly seems to have just about everything else. It is an especially good resource for pastry plating. If you are a serious entertainer as well as a serious baker, there will be things for you in this book which you may not find elsewhere, even in Martha Stewart's better books.One thing I would not do is take a recipe from this book to replace a recipe with which I am already happy. The carrot cake recipe in this book is pretty unexciting, as it contains neither pineapple nor `cookie spices' to jazz it up. The buttermilk biscuit recipe is pretty routine too, using both butter and shortening. I made this kind of biscuit for several years, until I tried an all butter recipe (plus White Lily flour) which gives me a much flakier result.Recommended for the serious baker. Highly recommended for the budding professional. Recipes tend to be a bit more complicated than some, but no more complicated than the best you will see from Sherry Yard or Nancy Silverton.

This product was as expected. Has a few editing errors but really good material.

You've probably noticed by now that there are two versions of this book on the Kindle Store; at least there are at the time of this review. One version is $38 and has a 5-star review, while this version is $3 and has a 3-star review.I've owned this version for about 5 minutes, and let me say that starting on the first page there are all kinds of typographical quirks and sentence errors. For example, paragraph 2 of the Preface is titled 'Organization', except on the Kindle it's written 'ORGANIzATION'. Another example, three paragraphs later "The recipes presented ... are utilized in inventive plated desserts, breakfast pastries, and plated desserts."It's like this $3 version is the unedited first draft.While this is annoying, my question is 'who cares?' Does it bother you enough to pay $35 more for an edited Kindle version with the same pictures, same techniques, same information?This reminds me of physics grad school. I could buy a $200 hard cover American version of a Solid State Physics text book by Landau/Lifshitz, or I could buy a $20 paperback version from India. The printing was worse in the Indian version, but the info was the same at 1/10th of the cost.It's an easy decision for me. Yes, the formatting and editing are poor, but for $3 this is a steal.

The kindle edition is a jumbled mess. Paragraphs end suddenly and half a sentence from another paragraph appears in the next line. Spacing between words are missing.Ingredients weights and % are all lumped with no spacing in a paragraph separate from the ingredients name so you have guess which number applies to which ingredient.Capital letters appear alternate with small ones.Don't buy this !

Very happy with the quality of the book I got. You would never know it was used!

For those who love great recipes this is a must have. I really enjoy the book is one of those classics with traditional recipes, some of the recipes are time consuming but good pastries and good baking is an ART, therefore you need some dedication.I love this book because it has recipes that I haven't found anywhere else like the Kirsch Torte which I love.You will never be dissapointed with this book.

Truly informative with technical baking skills. Hope you have a scale or can convert ounces into cups because most of the recipient are large batches for cooking schools. Lots of great info though!

Great book for the baking professional or chef. The recipes are large batch so it is more geared toward a restaurant or bakery operation. I have been using this book for 10 years in my restaurant and had to buy a new copy because we wore to old one out!

Everything you need to know!

The Print version of this book is a five-star item, the Kindle conversion is beyond amateurish in its conversion. The recipes are split so the ingredients and amounts need to be deciphered and the methodology is reorganised in some recipes which is fine if you are familiar with the product you wish to bake if not… the book also regularly causes the PC version of the reader to crash, sometimes you can close and reopen, three time so far I have had to delete and reinstall the reader.This is a buy at your own risk item for Kindle, the contents are excellent but need to be deciphered and you may not be able to view the recipes you want; there is no direct way to navigate this book you must use the arrows and go a page at a time.

I am not sure why but the recipes are not formatted correctly. The weights of ingredients aren't lined up which makes it very difficult and in some cases impossible to work out weights. It is as if it's a Chinese rip off copy or something. As well a lot of letters have capitals all over the place. lol.Still at this stage haven't tried recipes, but will have to re write them as I try them as they are so poorly written. I might edit this rating if the recipes work.

Kindle version of this book is terrible. The quantities are not listed with the ingredient list, but run on underneath, the instructions on several of the recipes are out of order or missing and the recipes at the end of the last chapter have instructions for the previous recipe listed. The printed book is fantastic, but I definitely do not recommend the kindle version.

I'd give it full stars for the price and the depth of details, but it loses stars because of the poor Kindle formatting. Ingredients and quantities do not line up, so it is challenging to read the list. The quantities are all on one line, so you have to manually type out the list in order to match them with ingredient. It also writes recipe titles with a weird upper/lower case: aPPle sPice or ruGelaCh. Happily, the procedures read just fine, and the photos are lovely.