Mastering the Art of French Pastry

by Bruce Healy, Paul Bugat

Explains French techniques for making doughs, batters, fillings, and toppings, providing hundreds of recipes for combining these ingredients to create brioches, croissants, cakes, pies, meringues, and puff pastries

Genres: Cookbooks, Food

450 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1984

Reviews

[Isis]

This is an awesome cookbook. The intimidating fancy French pastries are broken down into their basic components; straightforward recipes and techniques for making each component are given, and then it's just a matter of combining them. Okay, your version of tarte tatin or gateau montmorency might not look exactly as beautiful as the photograph, but it will impress the heck out of your friends, and it will taste AMAZING.

[Michael Lynch]

An indispensable book if you want to learn and make French Pastry. I apprenticed to Bruce back in the 1980's when he was developing the recipes for this book. His meticulousness in the kitchen is translated to the recipes, where the "secrets" of French pastry are carefully delineated.

[Travis Finch]

Positively the best cookbook on classic French Pastry out there. Written by a genuine rocket scientist who left his field to pursue his love of French desserts.
It's out of print because Bruce found some trivial inconsistencies in it and refused to renew it. If you can get your hands on a copy buy it. As a professional chef I've been using it for years and it has never failed me. Though I have on occasion failed it.

[Brian]

I picked this up at the library book sale this spring. It looks like it'll be a fabulous in-depth manual for making puff pastry (or feuilletage, as the book insists you refer to it as), but I haven't yet set aside a weekend to try out the instructions. I never knew that you could generate so many different French pastries simply by mixing and matching just a few pre-made components!

[Desi]

I just love learning about French Pastry...... So Good!!!