Patisserie at Home: The Essential French Pastry Cookbook―Techniques from Dough to Chocolate and Creams

This is a beautiful book containing classic pastries like Paris-Brest, Napoleons, and macarons. The architectural drawings of the pastries help you understand how they're put together, and the recipes are extremely clear and well written. Will you make pastries with an average of six layers of things that must be combined, cooked, and constructed? Maybe not. Nonetheless, you'll enjoy this coffee table book on pastries and appreciate the classic patisserie much more when you eat it.

The book was larger than expected but beautiful. Colorful pages with great recipes. So pretty that I will have it on display as well as useful in my baking at an upscale level.

Love this book! Has great pictures for setting up fine desserts and each recipe has a page reference to get other recipes. It’s very big not your normal size book that you can carry with you. Though it a great book to read on a Sunday bunch! I would recommend this book to whose who love pastry and are looking to perfect your fine dessert skills!

Nice book!

Beautiful book … as expected was a gift

TLDR, I think this is a great reference/idea book, but it's not good to bake directly from. Personally, I love this book, but you're not going to like it if you want recipes to bake from directly. This is primarily a reference book, and I peruse it regularly to get ideas or learn how classic desserts are baked. Want to know the difference between a french and swiss meringue and why you'd use one over the other? This book is great. What are the elements of a black forest cake? Also great. Want to make tiramisu from scratch? Look elsewhere. This book is really not constructed to bake from. In the actual recipe section, it usually says something like "make a sweet crust pastry," assuming you already know how to do that. Anything you make will have you either flipping to the front of the book to learn the base recipes or flipping to the back to learn techniques. Plus, I'm pretty positive all these recipes were originally in metric and converted (poorly) to imperial. You'll see measurements like "1 5/8 tablespoons" or "set the oven to 315 degrees." It's weird. Ultimately, it's a great book for a proficient baker looking to expand their skills and knowledge. But I would really not recommend trying to cook a complex dessert directly from it.

Principles of pastry making explained simply and full pointers for Success. Invaluable for those who needs to know why certain steps are crucial. Not the book if you are looking for recipes.

This was a gift from a friend who knows I love to bake. The recipes have pictures and are easy to follow. I’m working my way through these wonderful desserts.