Opera Patisserie: Essential Recipes for French Pastry

This book is visually beautiful – elegant design, high-quality print, and gorgeous photography. It works wonderfully as a decorative piece or a coffee table book for anyone who loves French pastry. However, when it comes to actually using it in the kitchen, it falls short. Some recipes don’t work as expected, and the instructions can be confusing unless you already own the rest of the series. There are great tips and interesting content, but it feels more like a pastry theory guide than a practical cookbook. If you’re looking for something to admire and browse through, it’s lovely. If you’re looking for a step-by-step baking companion, this probably isn’t it.

I couldn’t understand what is the cake flour or pastry flour class as…? It’ll be great to have explanation at the ingredients glossary section.

Not a cook's book - nice pics so good if you just want a glossy coffee table book

The picture of Grolet and his tight jeaned tattood trendy friends are awful, and sum up an awful book. Grolets obsession with trendiness and his desire to be different means that the illustrations are nothing like those which one would associate with French Patisserie irrespective of their eating quality-a hugh disappointment The recipes and instruction are also badly laid out and incomplete No one should buy this book and Amazon should not stock it.

I had read about poor recipe descriptions but being a patisserie-boulangerie student and an editor at gastronomy magazines for numerous years gave me an "I can do it"-positive attitute. Detailed subsciptions and information are missing; from steps, to time you need approximately for each step. This is book beautiful; from photography to exceptional typography. Once again though, design is not serving its purpose as even the layout could have been more helpful for the reader-cook. I've been anticipating so much for this book since I cannot travel to Paris and wanted a taste of Opera patisserie and honestly it left me with mixed feelings.

I believe there is a misconception in understanding EU standards vs US, so let’s be clear that if the French/Spanish/Italian recipes mention cake flour especially in laminated doughs they always refer to T45 (FR) or 00(IT) flour with high content of protein. But NOT the regular cake flour we usually refer to that has a standard protein content of 8-10%. So in the recipe of Cedric his flour is T45 that has a minimum of 12% protein content. Second thing, you may not laminate the dough the same date you start making it, the best to wait 12/24hrs in the fridge at 2 degrees Celsius or in the freezer, but never exceed 4 degrees Celsius. Unless you have a 10+ years of professional experience working with laminated doughs and you have proper environment. Lamination is all about temperature and humidity. You lose ether of these aspects, you will end up with unpleasant results. So yes, this recipe book is probably for the experienced chefs that has a good understanding of lamination process. It’s not easy to get to where Cedric’s croissant quality is, but still possible with multiple attempts. Hope now I was able clear up a negative reviews on his brilliant recipe book. Best regards farhadelights.us

Do they waste your money on thos book, just few pages only making some sense and 90% is just to fill the book as a book only 😂

A great book, no doubt about it Cedric is up there amongst the best, follow him on Tik Tok. However as a home cook, the recipes and processes are not clear and not detailed enough. In saying that a very nice coffee table book.

Livro Excelente

great recipe book, not a book for the home cook though, more of a coffee table read