My go-to baking book

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As someone who works in a professional pastry kitchen, I have dozens of pastry books. This is without doubt my favorite of them all and my go-to for most basic recipes. All the recipes are clearly laid out in cup measurements for 5-quart mixers and weight measurements for 20-quart mixers. The book covers yeast breads, laminated doughs, cakes, egg based components, pies, tarts and other fruit desserts, cookies, working with sugar, working with chocolate, frostings, fillings and components, and assembling/decorating cakes.

You won't find a lot of the fancy stuff thats in Professional Pastry Chef but for solid, basic recipes, this one is the way to go.

All My Baking Questions Answered!

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Excellent resource and a must-have reference even for the casual home baker. This book will prevent those baking failures and you'll even learn why things succeed!

Contrary to the "Nice Try But it Fails" review, this book does indeed discuss the methods for measuring and weighing flour that the authors used right up front. I find it's important to read those chatty beginning chapters. In this case the authors wasted no words (unlike me!) and so it's a quick and easy way to get information.

I didn't like every single recipe and think I have better ones for Key Lime pie, but then again, everyone has their favorites.

Highly recommended!

Nice Try, But It Fails

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This is designed to be a simple production manual: no educational material, few if any explanations; just all of the basic, important professional recipes you will need at work. It's main use, I suppose, is that it is small enough to toss in with your chef's coat suitcase or knife kit. Due to its convenient size, it might make a decent tool in your professional tool kit. Even though it has 150 recipes, which ought to be enough to cover the basics, it seemed the recipes selected lacked several basics. In general, this book was rather disappointing.

Problem #1: where are the baker's percentages?
The lack of baker's percentages anywhere in the book is a big mistake, but is an especially egregious sin in the bread, laminate, and cake chapters.

Problem #2: confusing ingredient listings
The book gets high marks for having 2 ingredient listings for every recipe, one for a single home serving, and one for a smaller bakery. However, the tables are rather confusing. The main listing of ingredients is for the home batch (which is not labeled as such), while the smaller listing on the right side of the table is for the larger, professional batch of that recipe (which is labeled as `large batch'). The tables should have been done in 3 columns: first ingredient name, second home batch (which should be so labeled) and third professional batch (which also should be so labeled), along with the yields of each batch.

Problem #3: genoise is totally wrong
This most basic, most fundamental recipe, the authors seem unable to get right. It calls for a 6 inch pan, which is quite rare. It also calls for `clarified browned butter', not a good idea unless your frosting is caramel based.

Problem #4: bad butter cakes
The explanations on pages 106-109 are so vague, disorganized, and misleading, that they constitute a danger to the newbie baker/pastry chef. Experienced hands should be able to navigate their way through this morass, but why should this be necessary in the first place?

Problem #5: cups of flour?
The small batch recipes always specify cups of flour. At no point in this book do the authors specify which method of flour measurement was used (scoop and sweep, spoon and sweep, etc.). It also never lists the equivalent weight for one cup of flour for those who do small recipes yet want professional accuracy and reliability. This failure alone is enough to disqualify it as a serious B&P reference book.

One good point: the table of contents lists all of the recipes in each chapter. So, if you need a recipe, just look at the appropriate chapter in the TOC, and there you are. Finding recipes is quick and easy.

A MUST for any baking Enthusiast!

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As a student currently enrolled in a Professional Baking and Pastry Program, I can say this book is a MUST. It provides information for both the recreational and professional baker.

Every baker NEEDS this book.

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I started a bakery/deli in 1993 using a professional baker and this book as my foundation. In time I also learned to use advice from my customers and from other pros. Still, the whole lot of the experts, save one, gave less useful information than did this classic by Joseph Amendola.

Theories of dough fermentation and the like are of especial importance for any new baker. When something goes wrong, too, this book has a good trouble-shooting section.

I heartily recommend this book to any baker, commercial or men and women trying to please their loved ones.

Other books you should add to the shelf are Professional Baking and Quantity Cooking.