Patisserie: A Step-by-step Guide to Baking French Pastries at Home

This splendid new book is an easy to follow guide which makes available all kinds of pastries to bake at home. The photographs are particularly good and Murielle imparts her skills with much attention to detail. We also learn a little of her family background which simply confirms the natural flair that the French have for creating such wonderful treats.

This is a wonderful book on the art of french patisserie, written by an expert and aimed at those who are keen on home cooking.I had already been practising and honing my skills but this book is an absolute delight.It's easy to follow, with clear instructions and beautiful photos.I've only had it a few days and have done mille feulle, ladies fingers, choux buns, macarons and rum baba.Black forest gateau is next on my list along with madelaines.I really hope that we might see Murielle with her own TV series.

Nice book with lots of recipes. As it`s been mentioned in some other reviews, in some recipes the author gives incorrect proportions, for example when preparing choux pastry dough I definitely needed more flour. The Paris-Brest recipe does not have proportions for the praline paste. However, I still can recommend this book because it has a step-by-step guide and lots of illustrations. My family loves desserts from this book!

A great book for any chef too have in the kitchen, great recipes, I recommend it to anyone who is interested in French pastries / patisserie work, value for money.

At first I thought that this book is really good but not brilliant. Now I know that I was wrong and I admit it.When you use it, you just know how wonderful all recipes are and I truly believe now that this was the best book to buy on french patisserie.Of course there are some minor issues but after a while you just don't notice them.For example I disliked at the beginning that the quantities were metric. I admit now that although it takes a bit longer to measure, the results are more accurate.For example, earlier during the week I made a cake with just the egg yolks and had 15 leftover egg whites (yeah...). Mrs Valette saved me with adding weight of the needed egg whites for her Hazelnut Dacquoise. I didn't waste my egg whites and made two stunning cakes from them. Why I'm so impressed? Well, you try to take out 7 egg whites from a bowl that holds 15...Also I found a bit confusing at the beginning that there is a technique page without measurements but when you actually use the book, following the actual recipe that asks for the technique, it's quite easy (recipe is at the following page). Now I don't even notice it and when think about it I believe it would be silly to put measurements in the technique page when the measurements are provided in the actual recipe on the next page.What I really love in this book is how the recipes are written. For example I know how much dough I'll get from each recipe and what kind of tin, mould to use - size etc! How long it will take to make everything (with preparation and baking time). That is really wonderful while I don't have a lot of tins.You might ask what about the recipes? I've tried 5 so far and all were absolutely delicious. I only had one problem and it was more of my own habit and local market perks - eggs that I use normally were too big and everything was too "eggy". I've changed to medium and all recipes work fine.I can't wait for weekend to try another one!I just wish that perchance with another edition of this brilliant book, they could add nutritious info to each recipe...

This book is the best ever published as a step by step guide to French pastries, or any other for that matter. I would love Murielle to know that she has got it spot on. It is so important to give correct information, expensive mistakes are not a happy experience. An example, a French chef whohas a cookery school in this country stated in his recipe for making Genoise sponge that the sabayon should be whisked until pale and volume has grown three times in size. Murielle gives an exact time for whisking of 15 minutes for a sabayon (in her fantastic 'light chocolate tart') which is so important as it takes that time and it worked beautifully. We are not chefs or patissiers and Murielle may not realise herself how useful that information was. I have been longing to start a blog to criticise chefs of great notoriety who turn out books willy nilly and clearly have no idea how to make some of the recipes; if I was truthful, I'd likely be sued which is the only thing stopping me. I am sure they pop into the kitchen in their restaurants and ask for a recipe to put in their book which offers an approximation of ingredients by people who are knocking these up day in day out. I am a good home cook and have followed recipes for 45 odd years and now I can see when a recipe is not going to work, well sometimes, but most young cooks wouldn't have the experience to notice whether proportions are incorrect. You can see the vast variation from chef to chef onmaking the same thing; Pasta is one and so many just don't turn out despite following the reciipe to the letter. My only problem with Murielle Valette's book is that it fell apart easily when I opened it wide to sit it on my book support. I guess she was just trying to keep the price down. I cannot praise her enough, she is quite wonderful.

It is good for basic elements and types of pastries and creams you'd use in French Patisserie but if you're hoping to learn how to put together those amazing works of art, this book falls flat.

I bought this book specifically because i liked the layout of the topics and recipes. I am determined to hone my patisserie skills and this book reads more like a textbook than a casual recipe book. Topics cover all the need-to-know basics and then moves on to teach you how to apply each component to create the perfect French pastry. Beautiful step-by-step pictures and in-depth explanation on how to execute the techniques. A must have for the serious home baker. I all, I am seriously pleased with this purchase. Best money I have spent in a while.

Awesome book.....from A of bakery to Z ...in very good manner and well illustrated...must have

Easy to follow recipes

I have the Kindle version of this book and wanted the print copy too. Lovely, authentic, by weight recipes. Good photos, easy to follow.

It is a very good book. Quite illustrative and appetizing photos, very good step-by-step images and well explained.Very well organized: first the bases then applied in various recipes.I recommend!

Wonderful! This is a splendid book. It has clear instructions and clear photographs of each step along the way, ideal for a novice pastry cook like me! Everything in it looks delicious and nothing is very scary, sonthis book has given me confidence to step into the patissier' s realm. Brilliant.