Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds
Book Description
Up-to-date, advanced techniques for the professional pastry chef and serious home baker The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef brings up-to-date coverage of the latest baking and pastry techniques to a new generation of pastry chefs and serious home bakers. This book covers advanced material and - like chef Bo's classic The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry, Fourth Edition - contains contemporary information to meet the needs of today's pastry kitchen. This volume contains nearly 500 recipes, which emphasize the techniques and presentations offered in top restaurants and bakeshops today.
Topics covered in depth include:
- Decorated cakes
- Modernist desserts
- Wedding cakes and holiday favorites
- Sugar work
- Marzipan figures
- Chocolate decorations
Illustrated step-by-step instructions demystify even the most complex techniques and preparations, while over 100 vivid color photographs bring finished dishes to life.
From the Inside Flap
Desserts are at once the ultimate indulgence of the fine diner and the ultimate test of a pastry chef's culinary skill. An elegant dessert not only provides perfect closure to a memorable meal, but also showcases a chef's unique powers of preparation, execution, and presentation. Culinary students and serious home bakers alike require an authoritative guide to the increasingly sophisticated pastries that are served in the world's best restaurants. The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef offers nearly 650 such recipes, revealing new and favorite techniques to today's generation of pastry professionals. A companion to Master Chef Bo Friberg's classic The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry, this comprehensive collection is ideal for second-year courses in baking programs at culinary schools, as well as for accomplished chefs in personal or professional kitchens who want to keep abreast of contemporary trends.
Chef Bo begins with elegant decorated cakes, describing the myriad complications and variations, then moves on to creating individual pastries and plated, frozen, and low-calorie desserts. He presents a special chapter on wedding cakes, which includes valuable information on the corollary business aspects, such as calculating size and determining cost. Other chapters address the rich world of charlottes, custards, Bavarian creams, mousses, soufflés, modernist desserts, and holiday favorites. Most importantly, in this advanced volume, Chef Bo offers clear, concise instructions, reinforced with line drawings and step-by-step photographs, of advanced decorating techniques, sugarwork, and chocolate artistry, as well as marzipan figures. Recipes include:
- Opera Cake
- Petite Chocolate and Brandied Cherry Pastries
- Milk Chocolate Marquise with Finger Banana Center and Red Currant Sauce
- Cinnamon Semifreddo Venizio with Coffee Bean Crisps
- Date-Stuffed Saffron-Poached Pears with Chardonnay Wine Sauce
- and many more. A special chapter on holiday desserts contains a host of traditional recipes, including Santa's Gingerbread Chalet, Swedish Spice Bread (Vörtbröt), and Chestnut Rum Torte.
Illustrated step-by-step instructions demystify even the most complex techniques and preparations, ensuring the recipes remain eminently accessible throughout. With over 100 vivid color photographs that bring the delicacies remarkably to life, The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef provides expert instruction on the latest and greatest desserts for the serious baker.
Reader Reviews
I'm going to start with one little criticism, and I only do it because I love this book: If you live in a small town like I do, many of the ingreedients in this book will be nigh-impossible to find. Things like goat's milk cheese or some specific varieties of fruits or seeds or specific types of chocolates simply aren't available where I live. So, if you're also from a small town that lacks specialty shops or whose stores lack variety, prepare to do a lot of inventive substitution. That being said, the book provides crystal-clear, step-by-step directions that lead you to create some of the most beautiful, delicious desserts you can imagine. Plus, it doesn't skimp on the science either, and for people like me who like to know the "why" as well as the "how", you'll appreciate that. The book is shockingly specific. First of all, all measurments are given in weight, which is much more accurate. Someone here once said that volume measurments exist to keep us stupid and professional bakers in business, and they're absolutely right. So invest in a good scale. Plus, the book gives great information about compensating for altitude, which is a huge deal where I live (nothing's ever easy in Wyoming). The written directions make even the most difficult procedure simple to follow along, and where things get even a little hazy, the author includes diagrams and photographs. Every recipe in this book is a perfect illustration of the fine balance between art and science that fine cooking really is. Not for those without the attention span to spend an hour or two in the kitchen, but if you have a passion for pastries you cannot do without this book.
