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

This book is humongous. It weighs over 9 pounds. With that being said it’s beautiful. Lots of great recipes, techniques, instructions, pictures, and illustrations. I bought this book with so many others that were on cyber Monday sales. I’m very happy with this purchase. It was a great price for a lovely book, even though it is pretty heavy

I don’t usually leave reviews but I felt compelled to after receiving my book. An instructional French pastry book would not be complete or authentic, without well written step by step instructions for simple traditional to phenomenally complex recipes, accompanied by beautiful pictures on high quality paper. Down to the ribbons for page markers, the book’s authors and contributors thought of everything. Nothing has been left out, from quality ingredient recommendations, to tips on how to prepare each tiny component to make the perfect pastry. I am literally in love with this book, and studying from cover to cover. I can only express my gratitude and appreciation for the contributors of this book who must have spent so much time, and passed on their traditions. I am only a home cook, but I have loved cooking and baking for my whole life. I care about making my food perfect for my loved ones, so they can understand the love I put into it. That is why I am so grateful for this book. You must purchase if you have a passion for baking and appreciate tradition as well. Ce livre est parfait et très spécial, il faut l'acheter !

I have nothing but nice things to say about this text. It's a massive book -- coffee-table sized for sure -- and it's full of exemplary instruction on pastry basics, as well as some beautiful, classic recipes. The instructions for techniques are accompanied by large, clear photos. Ingredients and equipment are noted ahead of time. If you don't have the time or money to go to pastry school, this is a great compromise in terms of self-paced learning.

First of all, this book is HUGE! Much, much larger than I anticipated, make sure you have room on your bookshelf for this massive tome. I think it weighs at least 5 lbs. A real steal for the price, though. Many of the simpler recipes are broken into steps and illustrated with photographs, so you can make sure you are learning the basic techniques correctly before moving on to the more challenging recipes. This book also has many similar recipes at increasing levels of difficulty, with Step 1s being sophisticated yet reasonably attainable for the home baker, and Step 3s being more on an award-winning professional pastry chef level. I've already learned so many tips and techniques that I didn't know before! Highly recommended, if you have the space! ;)

Ferrandi definitely has done justification with its name and status publishing this book in English. Easy to read text and beautifully done stunning clear large pictures Warm Congratulations Ferrandi keeping book price in range Such a massive production under very reasonable price alone deserve 10 stars Book is amazingly beautiful mixture of all time famous essential techniques and recipes will gradually take its reader at the peak of artisan level of production with exotic and complex flavors & colors of modern croissants, entremets, and infusion cakes. it has every thing for every one from bread, jam, jellies, chocolate, tarts, macarons, meringues, marzipan to frozen desserts. Very useful, accurate wealth of recipes need at least two set of life cycles to produce everything within this book. Those who never made it to Ferrandi as student (Included me) this will be souvenir for rest of our life. New or Mature which ever stage you are get this book sweet bakers. All the best.

Very complete! It seems like I can find the recipe for all things I'm interested like mousse, white chocolate mousse (which requires more ingredients to solidify it), all sorts of creme (patisserie, chantilly, mouseline, etc). And so far I've always had good results with the methods and ingredients. Lots of large pics and the words are just enough, not too much that it's overbearing like some other cookbooks. Updates Jan 2021: For the entremet recipes I do find that some of the measurements are off. For example on the round coffee entremet, it says to prepare 500ml heavy cream for the infused cream. Later on, only 240ml cream are used for the custard. So it takes some guessing if the typo was in the 500ml or the 240ml. Also I do find that for the entemet, oftentimes the components yield much more than needed. I think they can improve on that so that we don't need to waste too much. However, for individual, simpler recipe, the recipes seem to be more on point. And in all, it's a worthy book to have. Esp during lockdown, the book is full of inspiration of things to try from biscuits, chocolate, macarons, gummy jellies, sorbet, and many more.

I am in LOVE with this book. It’s become my night time reading (heads up, it’s very heavy). It’s printed on superb paper and the imagaes are amazing. I just tried the Macarons. I got all my ingredients ready as well as all the machinery, pots, piping bags etc. Very quickly I came to realize that this recipe must have been halved or quarterd (at least) from a commercial amount because there was no way that my stand up mixer would be able to whip up 3 Tbls of egg whites as the recipe called for... The whipping blade didn’t even touch them at the bottom of the bowl! The recipe also asks for another 3 Tbls of egg whites, to be separately mixed with an immersion blender and the food coloring. Again, the blades of the immersion blender didn’t even touch the egg whites, and I had them in a tight measuring cup to be able to blend them. Yet.... if you look at the images that accompany the instructions (see attached image), the book shows as if the amount is so much that the rounded part of the blender practically get’s covered... all with one and half egg whites! This is physically imposible. Same happened with melting 1/2 a cup of sugar with 2 Tbls of water to reach 245 degrees aprox. How to put your candy thermometer into that itty bitty amount, even if you use your smallest pot? It’s almost imposible without touching the bottom of the pot. I wound up scrambling an trying to improvise... needless to say the result was so far from what macarons are supposed to look like. BUT... if I may say so, I had never eaten such yummy tasting ones! I can not show you my end result... it’s too embarrassing... Oh... one more thing. The instructions after you have everything ready to assemble the macarons is quite deficient (I was aiming for chocolate macarons). They say to pipe the ganache on to the bottom of one macaron shell. But they also asked you to put that ganache in the fridge at least an hour ahead of time. Now, you are going to assemble them and the ganache is waaaay to hard to pipe! And there is no explanation as to how to pipe this hard ganache or why they have you place it in the fridge to begin with. I believe that at least this particular recipe was not tried out with the listed amounts on their ingredient list. So some may ask why 4 stars? Because I have learned so very much from this book. Because it is a beautiful book. Because I’m not giving up on it. Not quite yet! If I find other issues with the book I will update my review. For now... read the recipe thoroughly and keep in mind this issue.

Essential cookbook. Any serious chef should own a copy. Brilliantly put together.