Books |
Patisserie: Mastering the Fundamentals of French Pastry
Christophe Felder
By
Published: Mar 05, 2013
Category:
Food and Wine
Guest Butler Wendy Burden is the author of Dead End Gene Pool, a memoir of her absurd childhood as the great-great-great granddaughter of the richest man in America. She is currently writing “Machinery of Love + Death,” a memoir about love, death, and airplanes, set in Portland, Oregon.
I have a weakness for do-it-yourself literature.
Ikea instructions, VCR manuals, the Time-Life Carpenter’s Library — I don’t discriminate.
In my twenties I became obsessed with Jacques Pepin’s two-volume "The Art of Cooking," a tome that uses grainy black and white photographs to demonstrate the basics of French gastronomy. I was particularly interested in his patisserie, but my patisserie remained particularly terrible. I brioched and gateaued myself silly. I baked soggy, tipsy pastry shells, and curdled the butter cream of my petits fours. At dinner parties it was difficult to get anyone to appreciate my lines of Allumettes aux Anchois when they were doing lines of coke in my bathroom, so it didn’t matter that I remained clueless, despite implicitly following directions. It was the ‘80s, but if Christophe Felder’s “Patisserie: Mastering the Fundamentals of French Pastry” had been my reference, no one would have had a drug problem.
Like a good trust fund baby dilettante I continued on to French cooking school, specifically Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne, where I quickly learned that only pussies use a food processor. My patisserie more complex, but not better. The examining chef, whose ill-concealed goal was to severely limit the number of upstart foreign graduates from entering the Parisian restaurant market, almost failed me because the puff pastry of my tartes aux fruits was not exactly puffy.
A few years later, I was living the dream (or nightmare, depending on the moment): I was chef/owner of a Lilliputian French bistro. I made a different tart every day. They were always perfect because they were never, ever, made with puff pastry.
I hadn’t addressed this old bête noir until my copy of “Patisserie” arrived in a pool of light, accompanied by unseen singing voices. A doorstop of a tome, the book is a big chunk of candy, a sugary chew of hot pink, puffy perfection. I literally squealed when it came out of the UPS box. Open the padded neon cover, and the inside is as fulfilling as … well, reader, name your best fantasy. Skim the table of contents, and your teeth start to thrum and tingle. Flip through the book’s 800 pages and 3,200 instructional photographs, and you are running through a candy store with a shopping cart and a stolen credit card. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.]
But don’t let the pink squishiness fool you — “Patisserie” is a macho compilation of "Leçons de Pâtisserie,’ Felder’s definitive nine-book series. In his introduction, the author states his intention to “demystify the intricacies of professional pastry making for the home baker without oversimplifying the techniques.” Which he certainly does, disarming the reader with his straightforward presentation. Accredited with popularizing this step-by-step format in multiple photographs, Felder presents the recipes “as close to the way I teach them at my cooking schools as possible.”
All levels are welcome here: beginners, those who are familiar with baking, and professionals. There is no ego, no anecdotal bullshit, and because Felder cleverly attributes even the learning-est baker with natural capability, it endows the timid with a starter pack of encouragement. In fact, the only intimidation comes from not knowing where to begin, because you’ll want to make everything.
The book is divided into nine sections, starting with Basic Pastry and Tarts, and culminating in Petit Fours. Recipes are intelligently categorized: Easy, Intermediate, Advanced. Core techniques, such as crème patisserie, or pâte à choux, or butter cream, are presented separately. I was particularly impressed that, right away, Felder incorporates his instruction of the principles into a finished product; for example, in Lesson 8, a Pâte Sucrée becomes a lemon curd tart. It’s like you immediately get to wear the outfit you just learned how to sew.
In the 210 recipes, just about every classic French pastry and technique is covered, and then some. Lemon-Basil Macarons and Buttery Basque Cakes and Rum Napoleons and Mint Ganache Bonbons and Sugary Breton Puff Pastries and Layered Chocolate-Pistachio Cups — it makes my jeans shrink, just typing out the names. The Decoration chapter is mind blowing; you’ll want to leap right in and start pulling sugar roses and making chocolate spaghetti, though one can only assume the inclusion of “King-Kong en Pate d’Amandes” is a nod to Felder’s Japanese fan base. Seriously, who else would want to make an almond paste gorilla?
Felder’s babbling first words must have been mille-feuille and baba au rhum, growing up as he did with flour and chocolate and sugar and butter as his playmates. That he became a patisserie sensation at an early age is not surprising — his family owned a large bakery in Alsace. After apprenticing at various places, young Christophe became the head of special occasion cakes at Fauchon, in Paris, before going on to work in restaurants, notably with Guy Savoy, a Michelin three-star chef, and at the grand Hôtel Crillon.
A major celebrity, Felder has graced multiple magazine covers, and has received a gazillion awards. He owns hotels and cooking schools, and he lectures and teaches and consults and rakes in the cash in Europe and Japan. And now he is taking on the English-speaking world with “Patisserie,” the first of his 20-plus books to be translated.
Even at Amazon’s discounted price, the book is not cheap, but when I think of the thousands I spent on cooking school it seems like the bargain of the century. (My third batch of croissants are proofing as we speak; the first two having been so fantastique.)
Will this book inspire millions to drop their How Easy is That Ina Gartens? Probably not. Few of us are disciplined enough to do most of the tutorials, but "Patisserie" makes for excellent bedtime reading. It can also double as a pillow. And in these economically uncertain times, I’m betting someone attempts a Julie and Julia number with it.
Uh, wait a minute … why not me?
