Professional Baking, Fourth Edition

I have had many editions of this book, with this edition being my favorite. In addition to having all of the commercial use size versions of each recipe, this book includes those same recipes in a size more fitting for home cooking. This author's books are well written, with excellent explanations and lot's of photos. While baking is an art, it is also very much a science and you will find precise instructions for each method and item contained in this highly educational book.

Everything from A to Z including techniques, recipes, and a detailed description of what you are doing and why you need to do it. If you can follow a recipe, this awesome book will show you how to bake anything you want to.

I am a professional chef and bought this as a replacement to an old one that got destroyed. It is a great baking book that not only goes into great detail explaining all basic baking and pastry work but goes into some advanced stuff as well. It has wonderful charts and graphs and instructions are easy to follow and understand. The recipes are beyond amazing as well. I have used many a baking book and always come back to this one for basic work. Love this book!

This is the version of the book published for the trade, not the standard or student version. It is a good book for anyone in the baking profession. The book has a cd included also with software that will track supplies for reordering, volume, recipes, etc. Each recipe is written clearly with ingredients listed as well as different options for scaling, presentation and make up suggestions. Anyone can benefit from the information and formulary in this book but the target audience is clearly the professional. It is a good reference volume for bakers and pastry chefs.

This book has much valuable information about baking...it covers the different types of flour and when and why to use them, as well as the importance of using a scale when measuring ingredients. The recipes are good, and although this book is geared towards baking students and the portions might be larger than a home baker might want, this is where I have found that valuable information that other baking books tend to neglect.

I graduated culinary school 4 years ago and this was one of my textbooks. One summer I went to work at a resort and when I left the place I left my book behind. I was never able to get it back until now. It is in perfect condition and now I feel complete. This time the book doesn't leave my house. Thanks!

This is a wonderful addition for anyone desiring to avoid professional classes and just teach themselves cooking. But it truly is more a manual for discovery/learning than a basic cookbook. So keep that in mind!

Really helped in school

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exellent

First, the book was shipped in a thin plastic envelope, no protection against transport damage whatsoever. Consequently, the book arrived with dents. This is UNACCEPTABLE. Package your merchandise properly !!!!The the book itself is separated into a theoretical and a practical part (with recipes). The theoretical part includes an astonishing number of errors and contributes to proliferate myths. For example, the book states that gluten is only formed when water is added to flour. It thereby confuses the terms gluten and gluten network. It further states that rye does not form any gluten, intended to mean that rye dough does not form a gluten network, which is wrong. Gluten is a category of proteins of which there are many, and those proteins are already present in flours of the main bread grains: wheat, rye, barley and oats, all of them contain gluten. However, they are different in their ability to form a gluten network. This is an important distinction that a professional baker should know.As for gluten network development in rye dough, rye contains secalin (analogous to gliadin in wheat) and secalinin (analogous to glutenin in wheat). When they combine, they do form a gluten network. However, rye has a higher content of pentosans which wrap themselves around the gluten proteins and thereby inhibit the development of a gluten network. Yet, this effect is suppressed by acidity. It is for this very reason that rye breads in Europe have traditionally been made from acidic sourdoughs. An acidic sourdough suppresses the gluten network development inhibiting property of the pentosans. This is something every professional baker should know, but the book is entirely silent on this.In fact, the subject of sourdough is entirely absent from the theoretical section of the book. And in the recipe section of the book there are several recipes that include the word sourdough but examining the recipe shows that no sourdough is actually used. This is extremely bad. It actually fosters bakers committing fraud by selling bread as sourdough bread that isn't sourdough bread.No professional book on bakery should omit the theory, preparation and use of sourdough !!!However, the book is still useful for its pastry recipes.

Great condition.

Love this book. Purchased it used but the notes are actually quite helpful. My new baking bible.