The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Good cake/pastry books for a "bread guy"

jkandell's picture
jkandell

Good cake/pastry books for a "bread guy"

I'm an accomplished home bread baker, and have recently started experimenting with cakes and pastries.  However, I have been disappointed with the pastry books I've tried so far.  For instance, I'm probably the only person in the world who isn't thrilled with the Cake Bible. The recipes are all so "precious" and they just don't taste good to me.  "Cake flour" most of the books use tastes strongly of chemicals, and is very hard to take for a bread baker, where flour is everything.  A lot of the recipes by the well known authors like Beranbaum and Greenspan lack... for want of a better word... soul.  In contrast, when i read bread blogs here, even when they're not my personal style, i sense an authenticity and lack of artifice.  That's what I want from pastry baking books!  I'm willing to entertain that maybe I'm just a bread guy, not a cake guy.

This all a long way of asking if anyone has any cake and pastry recommendations for a "fresh loaf" bread baker person like me?

So far the guy I've liked the most has been David Lebowitz. He lives in Paris, but his recipes are quick an dirty, lacking unnecessary steps, and remind me of baking bread in their lack of precision and unusual combinations.  

biscuitbaker's picture
biscuitbaker

"The encyclopedia of baking" has some nice pictures and accurate formulas.  "The pilot club cookbook cake favorites" this is my go to book for cakes ask the formulas áre only a paragraph or two in length, and very soulful, plus there are 900 of them, might be harder to find though.  In addition the older books speak a bit more to me.  Hour this helps.  Will try to post pics.

Gabe

swives

biscuitbaker's picture
biscuitbaker

"The practical encyclopedia of baking". By Martha day

biscuitbaker's picture
biscuitbaker

Cookbook

Here is a picture of my soulish book, try a thrift store.

jkandell's picture
jkandell

no picture biscuitbaker. (broken link)

drogon's picture
drogon

His "Pastry" book is full of good ideas.

As for the flour - that's going to depend on where you are. Here in the UK we're spoilt with a plethora of mills producing good organic flour that actually has some taste to it.

You might also want to look for "The Book of Buns" for some yeasted ideas that are not quite cake/pastry, but uses techniques familiar to the bread making process...

But if you want classic cakes - then Mary Berry is hard to beat!

-Gordon

suave's picture
suave

I am no huge sweets baker, but I like to read, and my strong impression is that proper French pastry is not particularly forgiving and that it requires precisions, attention and skills, autenticity comes from perfection and mistakes can not be easily disguised as, how to put it, a flight of free spirit.  That being said, I've always been a fan of Flo Braker's The Simple Art of Perfect Baking and more recently fell in love with Jacquy Pfeiffer's The Art of French Pastry.  And of course Advanced Bread and Pastry is 60% pastry book.

breadman1015's picture
breadman1015

I would heartily recommend "The Professional Pastry Chef" by Bo Freiberg. He is an instructor at the CIA and his formulas always work. Unlike many other books, the cakes and pastries are not overly sweet. It is available on Amazon and older editions are really inexpensive.

cerevisiae's picture
cerevisiae

I quite enjoy Lebowitz's work, so I think seeking him out is a good idea. You may also like to peruse the archives of Smitten Kitchen, if for no other reason than that the author is friends with Levowitz and also has an enjoyable writing style.

jkandell's picture
jkandell

Thank you, but I detest smitten kitchen. Not so much the recipes, which are all curated from others, but the writing. I hate the cutesy style. Just give me the recipe! 

Kobali's picture
Kobali

http://www.amazon.com/Patisserie-Pierre-English-French-Edition/dp/8472120759

i do not have this book but look like as investment and only book you'll need.

Donkey_hot's picture
Donkey_hot

Baking Artisan Breads and Pastries, by Ciril Hitz.

Reynard's picture
Reynard

What about trying some older books? I find they are practical, have good recipes and are more user-friendly than the new stuff. A lot of the new books on cakes and pastries here in the UK (as with a lot of other cookery books) tend to be what I term "coffee table books" - good to look at, often tying in with a tv series / celebrity chef and not so good to use...

I bake cakes for charity fundraisers, and most of my best cake and pastry books are at least thirty years old - my go to book is Sainsbury's Book of Baking, which has everything from everyday basic cakes right through to the fancy celebration stuff. Cakes by Barbara Maher is another good one, and so is Home Baking by Elizabeth Pomeroy - the latter has a lot of regional UK recipes in it as well. For my German / Polish baking, I use books that are even older.

As someone else suggested, try a charity shop to look for books, especially if you're wanting to make cakes like what mum made, or like what granny used to make. In the mean time, what about a classic Victoria Sponge? Easy peasy to do, tastes great and even better if you've got an electric mixer :-)

4 oz butter or margarine

4 oz caster sugar

4 oz self-raising flour, sifted

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon hot water.

Cream the butter and the sugar until very light and fluffy. Crack the eggs into a jug, add the vanilla extract and whisk lightly with a fork. Add a heaped tablespoon of the flour to the sugar and fat mix, then work in the eggs a little at the time until everything is well combined. Fold in the remainder of the flour before adding the tablespoon of hot water. Divide mixture between two greased and lined 7-inch sandwich tins. Bake in a preheated oven 180C for 20 to 25 mins until golden and springy to the touch. Turn out and cool on a wire rack. When cool sandwich with filling(s) of choice - if I'm feeling naughty, then it's got to me raspberry jam and whipped cream. Otherwise just jam, or butter cream, or lemon curd or something of that ilk will do. Dust the top with icing sugar or caster sugar.

debunix's picture
debunix

What do you want to bake? 

It's a serious question.  Are you interested in more rustic desserts, or fancy creations?

I'd make different recommendations based on the answer.  Some books I like, and why I like them, are listed on my Cookbook page here.

You might find the recipes in the Cake Bible, BTW, are quite flexible to accommodate a variety of baking styles.  For example, I mill my own flour and adjust the wheat mix to match recommendations for soft/cake flour vs all purpose flour, and adjust the seasonings to suit my tastes, and they still work fine.  But I'm more interested in flavor than in perfect texture, and care little about the appearance. Still, while it is my go-to for basic cakes, none of my favorite cakes come out of that.

jkandell's picture
jkandell

What do you want to bake? Are you interested in more rustic desserts, or fancy creations?

Good question.  I'm more interested in rustic desserts, not fancy creations. I don't care about wedding cakes with pretty designs.  I don't really like frosting (though syrup and ganache have their place). Like you, I don't care what things look like, am more interested in texture and flavor.  I like things like Babka (half bread, half cake) and Beigli (poppyseed rolls) that don't look that beautiful but have a rustic taste.

Not that different from my tastes in bread, really!

You might find the recipes in the Cake Bible, BTW, are quite flexible to accommodate a variety of baking styles.

Actually, I've started doing that. Mostly to get away from that devil bleached flour. I use different types of cocoa, yogurts for sour cream, and oil for some of the butter sometimes.  The cakes turn out flatter than hers but I like the flavor and texture better.  My favorite cakes so far in there are the Lemon pound cake, Banana cake, and the Golden grand marnier.  But none of these has "blown me away" like I thought they would.  What are your favorite cakes that you mention btw?

debunix's picture
debunix

I'd suggest going back to some older works, if you're less concerned with precision of appearance, and doing the conversion to weight measurements yourself:  Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts, the Fannie Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham, Farm Journal's Pies, Cookies and Breads (available as separate or one combined volume); I don't own and can't vouch for their Cake volume.  With the latter, not written in modern style, you need to be comfortable also with the very simple recipe formats that assume you know your creaming from whipping from blending from cutting in; and some skill in reading recipes helps a lot in sifting wheat from chaff. 

My favorite cakes are Betty's Poppyseed Cake, which rarely comes out ultra-light despite whipping the egg whites separately, but so richly perfect otherwise that I don't care (nor does anyone who I've ever served it to; Theresa's Banana Cake, which is very versatile in accepting various toppings and sides; and the Queen of Sheba torte from Cocolat, which is very flexible with flights of fancy like this version, made for someone who loves habaneros and isn't that fond of sweets.  And I don't have a link to (or the book handy to give a specific title for) the buttermilk yellow cake from Fanny Farmer.

MichaelLily's picture
MichaelLily

Tartine has a good variety of bakery desserts, about 85 recipes in all.  It's not in the same spirit as Tartine Bread, but I've found it to be a good book with delicious recipes nonetheless.

jkandell's picture
jkandell

Yes!  I haven't actually tried any of Pruett's Tartine recipes yet, but they seem straightforward and, while fancy, they are without gimmicks.  And, yes, soulful. I've been eying her lemon chiffon for awhile. 

misheast's picture
misheast

I was going to suggest Tartine also, but specifically "Tartine Book No 3". The bread section is all about making bread with lots of types of flours and grains. The second half of the book takes the same approach and expands it to using different types of sugar or dairy as well. It's been fun seeing the change in flavors from these different sources.

Here's an example I made this week. I made the first variation, pumpkin seed-kamut. http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-5050-sabl-cookies-from-tartine-no-3-recipe-review-199190

Kobali's picture
Kobali

I do not like pastry and baking books that uses  cup and spoons. measuring with weight is professional way and the outcome is always good as baking needs to be precise than cooking. 

jkandell's picture
jkandell

Agreed, and they seem to be behind bread bakers in shifting to weights.  Beranbaum was one of the first to push weights in the 80s, so it's too bad I think her recipes just don't do it for me.  Cooks Illustrated has started using weights, and their baking is surprisingly good too.

Reynard's picture
Reynard

Recipes for everyday slicing / cut-and-come-again cakes...

My faves are bram brack (a dense fruit cake made with tea that's eaten sliced and buttered), cherry & coconut cake, the aforementioned Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle cake and, of course, chocolate cake...

I have three fabulous pre-war German and Polish cookery books which have some wonderful recipes in there, from apple sponges and jam-filled crescents to gugelhopfs, sand cakes, strudels and yeasted babki... Can always scale down to manageable quantities and translate if you're of a mind :-) One recipe starts with: take a kilo of flour, a kilo of butter and, if memory serves, a dozen eggs...

Here in the UK we don't get so many books that use cups - the majority use weights and will give both metric and imperial. Have to confess I do tend to favour the latter for cakes...

gary.turner's picture
gary.turner

See the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (1918), chapters 2 and 27 thru 33.  Straight forward recipes and advice.  The few I've tried have turned out well; not overly sweet and not frou-frou fancy.

cheers,

gary

TiffanyMercier's picture
TiffanyMercier

Go for genuine discussion. Instead of perusing books its simple and justifiable on the off chance that you get some information about the method to make cakes and pastries. In the event that I require a direction in regards to a heating issue I would like to solicit cooks from any eateries or bread kitchen shops. I unquestionably get my answers. Once I requested a red velvet cake online from this website since I needed to attempt along these lines additionally and it was flavorful, so I attempted to make notwithstanding, however I had a few issues in regards to the amount of fixings. I did what book says however regardless I botched up. So its constantly better that you ask a person who knows the nuts and bolts of cake preparing.

Norcalbaker's picture
Norcalbaker

is EVERYTHING! Ok the other ingredients matter too, but the flour is so important.   I never use cake flour. Instead, I stock a number flours are from central milling in Petaluma p, California.