Best pastry baking books according to redditors
We found 59 Reddit comments discussing the best pastry baking books. We ranked the 25 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 59 Reddit comments discussing the best pastry baking books. We ranked the 25 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
These are French style cakes, called patisserie. Other notable French pastry chefs include Pierre Herme, Sadaharu Aoki, and Jaques Genin just to name a few. These are different from usual baked goods because of well... The lack of being baked. A lot of techniques are used to make these pastries such as tempering chocolate, making mousses, etc. Many consider them difficult to make because of the large number of components required to assemble them. For example, a simple cake is just cake and frosting. But these pastries may require many hours of work because you have to wait for the mousse to set, the tart shell dough to be cool enough to work with, the meringue for baking the macaron shells to be the right consistency, and tempering the chocolate. Making quality French pastries is hard because you're working with a bunch of different components and all of these components are arguably difficult to master.
My suggestion is to master all of the basic French recipes (choux pastry, pastry cream, almond tart crust, macaron meringue), learn about flavour pairings (I don't know if the site is still active but try parispatisseries.com for some more information on the French pastry scene in Paris), and then combine the knowledge to make your own pastries. There are also recipe book out there such as Laduree's Sucre which covers a lot of iconic French pastries!
I'm typing this up on my phone so hopefully my information isn't too confusing !
Edit- I have added a list of resources that I think may be helpful:
Websites:
Basic French patisserie recipes
Road to Pastry Pretty sure someone mentioned this above! Great basic recipes.
Patisserie Makes Perfect Solid website about patisserie
Paris' patisserie scene Great for learning more about the components of pastries, popular flavours, etc. The site however is no longer being updated, but it can still serve as good inspiration. Also if you are interested in a certain reciple, you can probably do further googling and find the recipe for it online.
Evan's Kitchen Ramblings A variety of entrement cakes that offer a twist with Asian flabours, and many of her posts offer recipes (but not all of them). Great for inspiration as well!
Books:
Fou de Patisserie is a French magazine that talks about pastries by all the big name pastry shops.
Laduree's Sucre is a recipe book that comes in both French and English that teaches you how to make basic French recipes, as well as the store's most iconic pastries (Laduree is the story that invented the macaron!)
Pastries by Pierre Herme Often regarded as the Picasso of French pastry. His book offers basic recipes as well as recipes for his creations.
These are just places to start and get you thinking about pastries.
It's not dedicated to chocolate work, but our class textbook is this textbook. It's got a lot of useful information in it, if you're willing to spend the money, about chocolate work and more. A lot of the books I have are dedicated to breads and pastries since this class has been my first extensive introduction to chocolate, so I don't have many resources regarding books for that yet.
This is one of the newer ones. It has the best reviews but I haven't seen it myself. I know it is used by some French pastry schools.
Also, Ferrandi (the most respected culinary school in France) recently published a big basic book of patisserie. It is beautifully produced. I have it in French but there is an English translation available here. It's a huge book with lots of step-by-step photos. Recommended.
Does it have to be a Bake Off book? I have Kim Joy's and I really like it but some of the recipes are quite elaborate. I like it because I am not a great natural decorator and she has lots of tips. I made her macarons and lemon curd and they were delicious!
If it doesn't have to be a GBBO book, here are a few cookbooks I love to work out of:
https://www.amazon.com/Patisserie-Mastering-Fundamentals-French-Pastry/dp/0847839621/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=patisserie&qid=1571212650&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Baked-Recipes-Savory-Goodies/dp/1617691674
https://www.amazon.com/Bake-Essential-Techniques-Perfect-Baking/dp/1906868239/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bake+malgieri&qid=1571212907&s=books&sr=1-1
It’s reeeeally good! I think I slightly overbaked the génoise, but the mousseline is so fluffy and delicious. It tastes like a fancy strawberry shortcake. I used the recipe from Pierre Hermé Pastries
more pics
Thanks! Pulled it from a French pastry book - https://www.amazon.com/Art-French-Pastry-Jacquy-Pfeiffer/dp/030795935X
Still learning how to “prettify” things though!
One of the most beautiful books / series is Patisserie at Home by Melanie Dupuis. There are a couple more like The Complete Guide to Baking: Bread, Brioche and Other Gourmet Treats, French Cooking at Home and The Ultimate Book of Party Food. They are simply stunning!
Is this the book? https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Elisabeth-M-Prueitt/dp/0811851508
I've never been able to understand what people mean when they talk about the butter slab matching the consistency of the dough. How pliable do they need to be? Once the butter is folded in, how do you judge its consistency? And finally, what rolling technique do you use so that you don't break up the butter?
It's from Tartine's first book.
Tartine https://www.amazon.com/dp/0811851508/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Wjq7yb4RHPYF6
You should know that the difficulty level is high. Took me about a dozen times of finessing to get it right. Good luck!
The Pastry Chef's Little Black Book
https://www.amazon.com/Pastry-Chefs-Little-Black-Book/dp/0933477635
If you get her How Baking Works (lots of chemistry) and a pastry textbook (every technique she'll ever need to know plus some basic scientific fundamentals), she'll be able to learn everything about baking.
This is my textbook and it's very easy to read and informative. https://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Techniques-Classic-Pastry-Arts/dp/1584798033
Oooh. I would suggest some fancy ingredients like some Nielsen Massey vanilla paste (I have the gigantic 1 quart size myself and it's pretty much my favorite thing ever) or some Valrhona cocoa powder or feves (fancy chocolate chips). Some high quality measuring cups like these ones from All Clad would probably make her over the moon (as others have said, you can never have enough measuring cups and spoons, and heavy-weighted ones like those are a delight to use). You can round out your gift with a few cookbooks you think she might like -- some suggestions are the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (since you mentioned she makes lots of cupcakes), the Tartine Cookbook (I love this one), and Rose Levy Berenbaum's Cake Bible or Heavenly Cakes.
Link for the lazy
Life changing shit right here.
I have a cookbook obsession, I have roughly 500 that are somewhat organized so I feel like I can be of great use here. I will break it down by type to make it easier.
Bibles
Bread
Caramels/Candys/Ice Cream
Jack of all trades
Pastry/Pies
Textbooks
I'm sure I am leaving out a bunch of great ones but if I had to suggest just 1 to anyone it would DEFINITELY be The Art of French Pastry. Best for somebody who has done basics already and looking to try a little more. Even as a professional baker I find myself coming back and just reading the little spots like how he burned himself on his caramel. Great, great book!
Tartine.
By far my favorite baking/pastry book in my young life. :)
The recipes are so versatile, detailed and simple that it works for just about everything!
I hands down strongly recommend How Baking Works (for the science behind baking and ingredients used) and Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft (for recipes and methods). These two books will literally cover almost everything you need to know in detail and are awesome reference books for learning methods and recipes. I use them daily.
I would also add The Professional Pastry Chef : Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry as a third book if you are willing to get it, but the first i mentioned are better to start off with.
They might have copies available at your local library, but if they don't you can always go down to Barnes and Noble if you are in the US and find them there for free reading. I think amazon/half.com has the best prices though.
They are a bit expensive new, but used on amazon/half.com or buying older issues is really reasonable in my opinion. You can get the older issue copies without missing out anything important. They really only do minor changes to the new issues. The core of the book doesn't change much. I can't recommend these books enough for people who want to learn baking in depth on their own.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Baking-Works-Exploring-Fundamentals/dp/0470392673/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405381058&sr=1-1&keywords=science+behind+baking
http://www.amazon.com/Baking-Pastry-Mastering-Art-Craft/dp/047005591X/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405381103&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=cuklinary+instute+of+america+baking
I got this book as a gift when I was in high school. A lot of it is just black and white, but there are blocks of color photo pages with lovely pictures. I just sat and read a lot of it for fun and learned a lot about techniques. I did get this when I was aiming to become a pastry chef, though my path changed out of the food realm career-wise, I still love this book. I know it's not a periodical, but may be worth checking out.
No-Fail Gluten-Free Bread Baking: Classic Bread Recipes for the Texture and Flavor You Love https://www.amazon.com/dp/1641520191/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_bKo1CbJBJBGZM
Idk how to add a link so here it is from amazon.
I'll have toDM it cause it's out if a book :)
Edit to say: I lied, I can't attach a word document in a reddit DM. You can either DM me your email address and I'll send it OR purchase this book https://www.amazon.com/Art-French-Pastry-Jacquy-Pfeiffer/dp/030795935X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=jacquy+pfeiffer&qid=1557018828&s=gateway&sr=8-1
If anyone is curious, I️ got the recipe from this book.
I have this book http://www.amazon.com/The-Professional-Pastry-Chef-Fundamentals/dp/0471359254, which is amazing. I would highly recommend it.
It has lots of recipes, many of which are not necessarily for a full a cake or pie, but rather a part for the cake, like a sponge cake recipe, a recipe for puff pastry, or for a ganache. Then when it tells you how to make a classic dessert later, it will pull from those basic recipes.
It gives you a lot of science behind each group of recipes, how each ingredient affects the way the final product turns out, and a lot of information about techniques, like different ways to temper chocolate for example.
It also has a pretty comprehensive guide to any ingredient that would be used in baking, like spices, fruits-there is 2 pages on different types of apples, thickeners, alcohols, etc. There is a similar guide for equipment, and also a section on metric-U.S. conversions.
Link to recipe.
Makes 12 choux puffs
Pâte Sucrée (Sweet) Tart Dough
2 1/2 oz (75g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 oz (43g) powdered sugar, sifted
3 Tbsp (15g) almond flour
1/4 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
Pinch fleur de sel or kosher salt
1/2 (25g) large egg, lightly beaten
4 1/2 oz (125g) all-purpose flour
In the bowl of a stand mixer, with the paddle attachment, cream together the soft butter and powdered sugar for about 1 minute. Mix in the almond flour, vanilla bean seeds, and fleur de sel. Add in the egg and mix until combined. On low, add in the flour and mix just until dough comes together.
Roll out the tart dough, between two pieces of parchment paper, to 1/16-inch thickness. Place the parchment encased dough onto a baking sheet and transfer to the freezer. Store in the freezer until frozen firm, at least 20 minutes. Once frozen, remove dough from freezer and cut out a dozen 2-inch rounds using a round biscuit or cookie cutter. Transfer any uncut dough and rounds back to the freezer for storing until ready to use.
Store any leftover tart dough, wrapped airtight in plastic wrap, in the freezer for up to 1 month.
Recipe adapted from Pastries by Pierre Hermé.
​
Pâte à Choux
2 oz (57 ml) water
2 oz (57 ml) whole milk
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp fleur de sel or kosher salt
2 oz (57g) unsalted butter
2 1/2 oz (70g) all-purpose flour
4 1/2 oz (125g) large eggs, lightly beaten
Preheat the oven to 400F (204C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat. Prepare a large piping bag fitted with a round pastry tip.
In a saucepan, combine the water, milk, sugar, fleur de sel, and butter. Bring to a boil, remove from heat, and immediately dump in all the flour. Quickly stir in the flour, using a wooden spoon or heat-proof spatula, and then place the saucepan back over medium-high heat. Continue to stir the mixture, without stopping, until the paste is smooth and shiny, about 1-2 minutes. It will pull away from the sides of the pan and leave a thin coating of cooked paste on the bottom when ready.
Transfer the paste to a stand mixer bowl fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix paste, on low, for about 1 minute to cool it down. Gradually stream in the eggs, allowing each addition to mix into the paste, until all is added. Scrape down the bowl and mix, on medium, until pâte à choux is smooth and shiny, about 30 seconds. Tip: Wet the tip of your finger and drag a trail through the final choux to check for the proper consistency. Choux should slightly fall back on its mark and be lightly elastic in movement. If the choux is too stiff and doesn’t slightly fall back on the mark, then add a little more egg. Choux should never be runny.
Transfer the pâte à choux to the prepared piping bag. Pipe out 12 choux mounds, about 2-inches round and 1/2-inch tall, onto the prepared baking sheet. Evenly space them 2-inches apart to prevent touching during baking. Tip: At this point, the baking sheet can be placed in the freezer until the choux mounds are completely frozen if desired. Once frozen, they can be transferred to a freezer bag and baked off as needed. Place one frozen sweet tart dough round on top of each choux mound.
Place the baking sheet in the oven and immediately turn down the oven temperature to 350F (176C). Bake choux puffs for 40 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet and turn down the oven to 325F (163F), then bake for 25 minutes more until choux are deeply golden. Remove from oven and set on cooling rack to cool.
Store any unfilled choux puff shells, in a large freezer bag, in the the freezer for up to three weeks.
Recipe adapted from Pastries by Pierre Hermé.
​
Whipped Vanilla Bean White Chocolate Ganache
8 oz (227g) white chocolate, high quality such as Valrhona, Callebaut, or Guittard
16 oz (453g) heavy cream
1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
Finely chop the white chocolate and place into a bowl.
In a saucepan, bring the heavy cream and scraped vanilla bean pod and seeds to a boil. Pour over the chopped chocolate and let sit for 1 minute. Discard the vanilla bean pod. Whisk the chocolate mixture until thoroughly melted and combined. Set in the refrigerator to chill, at least 4 hours.
Once chilled and ready to use, transfer the ganache to the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment. Whip ganache to medium-stiff peaks (careful not to over whip or it’ll become too stiff to pipe). Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a medium round pastry tip.
Tartine is a pastry book \^_^. As for what I want to make, I don't know yet. I'm going to be spending the next few days going over my current cook books and compiling a list.
http://www.amazon.com/The-French-Pastry-Jacquy-Pfeiffer/dp/030795935X
This by far. He is the co-owner of arguably the best pastry school in the USA and has had his family and friends test these recipes in their own kitchens to make sure they are easy to follow and yield excellent results.
I've used the Culinary Institute of America one with success. I used the recipe of the previous edition of this. Sooo good. I've wanted to do it again, but rolling it thin enough with just a rolling pin is rather time consuming.
Bo Friberg's Professional Pastry Chef.
The microplane fine grater is one of my favorite tools. Finely grated lemon zest makes so many things super delicious. It's good for grating a little cinnamon or nutmeg into a baking project as well.
I use my fine sieve frequently for baking as well, like when I have to strain pastry cream to help it cool down or get the seeds out of raspberries.
Another favorite baking "gadget" is the cake strip - it prevents the cake from puffing up in the middle. Otherwise you have to cut off a fair sized chunk in order to stack it in layers.
My ultimate baking cookbook is Tartine bakery's - they are great at explaining complicated techniques and everything turns out fantastic.
I spelled caramelized wrong, oops.
Recipe
The tart shell and pastry cream recipes are from the Tartine cookbook. Both seem fairly standard (I don't want to copy from the cookbook!). I used sweet vanilla pastry cream but made it with half and half instead of whole milk.
Cut the figs in half, dipped the cut side in sugar, and caramelized them on the stove for about 5 minutes each. Set them in a bowl to cool. Then poured 3 tablespoons of bourbon in the fig drippings, about 1 tablespoon of honey, and 2 tablespoons of butter and cooked it down until it was a little thick.
Assembly: 1 cool tart shell, filled about 3/4 full with cold pastry cream, topped with figs, and served the bourbon sauce on the side to prevent sogginess. The bourbon sauce made the tart, it really isn't the same without it.
A little heavy for summer but just got the tart pan and figs were $6 at costco, so...yeah.
THIS!
OK, so it partly depends on what she already has but things under $70 that I get a lot of use out of:
Good luck!
I use the appendix in The Pastry Chef's Companion. For anything else that's not back there, I measure it out, weigh it, then write it down in a notebook for future reference. Yeah, it's not the "true" ratio but it works well enough for me.
Also, good book. Try the Pan l'Acciene formula when you get a chance. It's unbelievable.
The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart is my number one recommendation for bread. Im also a big fan of Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. His first book, Tartine is also great btw. I would skip out on Tartine Book No.3 though which seems to have too many errors for my liking. Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish is also one of the better bread baking books out there.
For general baking, im a big fan of Bouchon Bakery. And one book that will surely help you improve as a baker and I highly recommend you cook through is The Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer. Its like a pastry arts class in a book. I am actually cooking my way through this. If you have a serious sweet tooth, Momofoku Milk Bar by Christina Tosi will probably be what you're looking for. And as someone else recommended, the Baked books are all great.
For cakes, it has to be The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Bernanbaum. This is probably the best cake book of all time. I would supplement this with Toba Garrett's Professional Cake Decorating book.
For pies, my favorites are Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Hoosier Mama. One that I haven't tried but am planning to buy is First Prize Pies. If the book lives up to their reputation, it should be an excellent book.
For plated, more ambitious desserts, I like Payard Desserts. I refer to this when I want to impress company.
This is my first time ever posting on Reddit. Anyway, I am going to try the challenge this year since I usually bring baked goods to work every two weeks anyway. These Chocolate Friands are from the Tartine book, and the recipe for the Friands can also be found on this site. Not the best looking things I've made lately since I utterly failed at properly greasing the mini muffin pans today, but they are a really fudgy brownie like cupcake. I would definitely make them again.
Baking, that reminds me of those books by the Culinary Institute of America.
Baking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America
Baking & Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft (Basically for professionals, but usable for the advanced home baker too)
Not Julia Childs but this is a great book
https://www.amazon.com/Art-French-Pastry-Jacquy-Pfeiffer/dp/030795935X
https://www.amazon.com/Plating-Gold-Dessert-National-Championships/dp/1118059840
I asked him and he said this is the book I was referring to. This other one is one I used back in high school. It's short, but teaches basic concepts pretty well.
https://www.amazon.com/Working-Plate-Art-Food-Presentation/dp/047147939X/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_1/138-5228499-9387854?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=047147939X&pd_rd_r=207ab7bf-9c80-49a0-93fa-37aed4a53a77&pd_rd_w=zS0nI&pd_rd_wg=sW6OI&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=5WZZHFHKCRR9FBV5JWTR&psc=1&refRID=5WZZHFHKCRR9FBV5JWTR
They were awesome! My mom made them using the Raspberry Bullseye recipe from the Top Pot Doughnuts Cookbook. Next time I see her I'll see if I can get the actual recipe from the book!
It's from this book.
I would suggest doing some reading on the science of baking. I don't know if Panera taught you guys any of that, but it is SO helpful to know in my own baking, and just knowing a few small facts can show that you're really knowledgeable.
Some good options, if you have access to a library or want to spend the money on amazon - How Baking Works, King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion and The Pastry Chef's Companion are all good bets. Beware, though - The Pastry Chef's Companion is super involved and interesting but the science of baking stuff isn't very prevalent. It's there, but not as much as in the first two books.
Best of luck! Be honest with the interviewers and it will go great. Keep us updated on how it goes!
You should try the recipe for brioche from this book! It takes two days total to make, but it is soooo delicious and absolutely worth it. He also includes a recipe for cinnamon rolls using this dough and they are easily the best cinnamon rolls I've ever had. :)
This week we went back to eclairs. Our last ones tragically deflated, and the cream was eggy, and the chocolate a mess. In comparison, these were amazing!
For Christmas I received this cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Patisserie-at-Home-Melanie-Dupuis/dp/0062445316/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=C61K2GF8TTX5QQAR714M, which is quite good. It has "Learn" and "Understand" sections about the various recipes. Additionally, the recipes are all for the individual components (creams, pastries, techniques, etc.) and so composition is quite easy.
The recipes all included good tells for knowing when components were cooked enough, particularly the choux, which had a nice crackling noise to listen for.
They took a very long time but were definitely worth it in the end, and a huge improvement over our last effort!