I bought this book because it had a starred review in
Booklist. I enjoy baking and I am interested in learning more about it and hopefully, progressing to more difficult pastries. The review said this would help with basics and that it would teach me how to make some pastries at home. It was written by a renowned French pastry chef, what could go wrong? Well, I'll tell you. First, the good points. The photos are great! However, the book was obviously rushed to the American market without consideration for the home cook or how someone needs to be able to read a cookbook in order for it to actually be a "workshop" and teach anything. The ingredients lists mostly do not follow the conventional form of a list. They are written mostly, though not consistently (which is another problem) in sentence form at the top of the recipe. The print is pretty small and the color is pale, so it is difficult to read and then to get your ingredients together quickly or determine whether you will need to make a trip to the store when they are printed in this way. Far worse, though, is the fact that whoever converted these recipes from metric measurements or possibly weight measurements did not bother to really convert them. So you end up with amounts like this: 1 stick plus 1 3/4 tsp. of unsalted butter, 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon of confectioner's sugar. Are they kidding? I was, to say the least, extremely disappointed. But, like I said, the pictures were fabulous and the titles sounded so good! So, I decided to work my way through the recipes and fix them for the American home cook. This is the first one that I am completely satisfied with, there are more to come. I present you with Lime Poppyseed Loaf. I have tested this several times and made adjustments until I am satisfied that you will get the same results I did and that your cake will be delicious, moist, and wonderfully limy.
Hachette Books if you're listening, please hire me or someone like me to convert your next European cookbook for the American market.
