--- product_id: 1578367 title: "The Art of French Pastry: A James Beard Award Winner: A Cookbook" price: "$70.66" currency: USD in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/1578367-the-art-of-french-pastry-a-james-beard-award-winner store_origin: US region: United States of America --- # 2014 James Beard Award Winner Metric & Volume Measurements Included 746 Reviews, 4.7⭐ Average Rating The Art of French Pastry: A James Beard Award Winner: A Cookbook **Price:** $70.66 **Availability:** βœ… In Stock ## Summary > πŸ₯ Unlock the secrets of French pastry perfectionβ€”because your kitchen deserves a Michelin touch! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Art of French Pastry: A James Beard Award Winner: A Cookbook - **How much does it cost?** $70.66 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.us](https://www.desertcart.us/products/1578367-the-art-of-french-pastry-a-james-beard-award-winner) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - β€’ **Award-Winning Expertise:** Crafted by Jacquy Pfeiffer, a James Beard Award-winning author and pastry master. - β€’ **Master the Fundamentals:** Step-by-step guidance from a world-renowned pastry teacher ensures you nail every technique. - β€’ **Elevate Your Home Baking:** Transform your kitchen into a French patisserie with recipes praised by friends, family, and pros alike. - β€’ **Dual Measurement Convenience:** Ingredients listed in both metric and volume units for seamless global kitchen use. - β€’ **Precision Baking Made Simple:** Detailed tips on sugar temperature, timing, and ingredient handling to avoid common pitfalls. ## Overview The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook by Jacquy Pfeiffer is a James Beard Award-winning guide that delivers precise, approachable instruction on classic French pastry techniques. Featuring clear recipes with dual measurements, expert tips to avoid common baking errors, and a 4.7-star rating from over 700 reviews, this cookbook is the ultimate resource for ambitious home bakers eager to master authentic French desserts. ## Description The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook [Pfeiffer, Jacquy, Shulman, Martha Rose] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook Review: Excellent teaching text on French pastry - The best part about this book are the author's precise descriptions, the whys and the hows, the warnings about what could and usually does go wrong all based on his many years of experience as a teacher. Some of the recipes are unique or include unique presentation but most of them you can find in other books and overall the variety of recipes is not huge. The value of this cookbook is in the instruction to the fundamentals and the approachable way in which it is presented. I have already learned so much. Take for example, the author's recipe and instructions for Italian meringue. I have had two prior failed attempts with making this recipe, once because my sugar crystalized while cooking and the second time because it was cooked before the whites were ready. With Jacquy Pfieffer's detailed instructions I was able to successfully make this recipe and I now understand how to avoid both of the mistakes leading to my previous failed attempts. To avoid sugar crystalization the author tells us that the sugar should be swirled gently so as not to get too much of it on the sides of the pan and to use a wet brush to wash down the crystals. He says to be generous with how saturated the brush is because it doesn't matter if you add additional water to the pan as it all cooks down anyway. This is exactly why I had trouble before - I attempted to brush down the crystals but was fearful of adding too much water which led to inadequate brushing and ultimately sugar crystalization. He also addressed my second problem on timing with very precise instructions regarding sugar temperature at which to start beating the whites and the beating speed. Other basic recipes I've tried with great success were the tart crust and lemon curd. I used Rose Levy's Beranbaum's recipe for pate sucre in the past but got unsatisfactory results due to the temperature being too high. She says to start with a 425F oven, then switch to 375 after 5 minutes. This resulted in a crust that browned way too quickly around the edges and set very hard. Mr. Pfeiffer tells us to bake at 325 for a longer period of time to encourage water to evaporate without browning leading to a perfectly golden and crumbly crust. Outstanding! I like the organization of this book. Each recipe has a list of ingredients in both metric and volume measures at the top and a list of equipment in a box to the side. Some of the basic recipes that are used repeatedly in multiple recipes are included in the beginning of the book. The paper has a nice quality and the pictures are beautiful though there are not pictures for every recipe. I agree with the other reviewer that noted it would be nice to have additional pictures or line drawings of techniques but that is really my only minus for this book. All in all, I am extremely happy with this purchase. I own a lot of baking books but I think this is going to become my go to manual for most foundational recipes taking over Flo Braker's "The Art of Perfect Baking." I understand this book is nominated for the IACP and the James Beard Award and I hope it wins both of them! UPDATE: Generally, all the recipes I have tried from here have been successful (though a bit too sweet for my taste despite the fact that he says he does not like overly sweet desserts). I did have trouble with the flourless chocolate sponge cake. It came out very flat (less than 1 cm high) and you could barely taste the chocolate (and I used good quality El Rey 65% chocolate). Mine looked nothing like the photo in the book, the one for the hazelnut chocolate verrine, which appears thicker and much darker. Something seems to be off with the recipe. The amount of chocolate (85g) just seems too small to produce a truly chocolatey cake. I remade it using a recipe from another book that uses cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate and it came out much better. Review: Excellent pastry book on Making the Art of French Pastry - Great book on making the art of French pastries. Great book with pictures and easy to read writing style of author. Excellent on additional information on buying and using best ingredients. Also learn from Chapter 1 because these are the fundamentals, then master them and move on to the next chapters. I was deeply engaged making puff pastry, cream anglaise and detrempe (making croissants and chocolate croissants). Learning Chapter 1 recipes take time and patience. And practice makes perfect. There are even pictures and paragraphs explaining how to pipe pastries, macarons and other fillings and frost your pastries like a pro pastry chef. Excellent book to invest, all you need is desire, passion, patience and preserverance to learn "The Art of French Pastry". Even a home baker can do this. After a year buying a Kindle version of this book, i bought the hard copy and have tried the recipes on this book. Everything here is amazing. this is a book for the adverturous home cooks who want to learn the art of making French pastries, especially in the region of Alsace. The author is a respected teacher all over the world and his stories, passion and his recipes speaks for itself. It offers the readers delight and also the know-how and some tips and secrets of achieving these delicious morsels. So far, I have tried many recipes in this book by going through the pastry fundamentals, and moving on to what I want to make on the succeeding pastries like tarts, cookies, cakes and the last chapter. all of my friends, family and co-workers tell me these are fantastic. Some of the pastries that I have tried were memorable from my earlier years in Hong Kong where my dad's expat friends would bring sweets and gifts when he host parties. But anyway, I highly recommend this book if you want to learn the Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer. ## Features - Winner of the 2014 James Beard Award for Best Cookbook, Dessert & Baking ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #73,339 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #43 in Pastry Baking (Books) #54 in French Cooking, Food & Wine #102 in Christmas Cooking | | Customer Reviews | 4.7 out of 5 stars 746 Reviews | ## Images ![The Art of French Pastry: A James Beard Award Winner: A Cookbook - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81QZHjanZHL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent teaching text on French pastry *by D***4 on May 13, 2014* The best part about this book are the author's precise descriptions, the whys and the hows, the warnings about what could and usually does go wrong all based on his many years of experience as a teacher. Some of the recipes are unique or include unique presentation but most of them you can find in other books and overall the variety of recipes is not huge. The value of this cookbook is in the instruction to the fundamentals and the approachable way in which it is presented. I have already learned so much. Take for example, the author's recipe and instructions for Italian meringue. I have had two prior failed attempts with making this recipe, once because my sugar crystalized while cooking and the second time because it was cooked before the whites were ready. With Jacquy Pfieffer's detailed instructions I was able to successfully make this recipe and I now understand how to avoid both of the mistakes leading to my previous failed attempts. To avoid sugar crystalization the author tells us that the sugar should be swirled gently so as not to get too much of it on the sides of the pan and to use a wet brush to wash down the crystals. He says to be generous with how saturated the brush is because it doesn't matter if you add additional water to the pan as it all cooks down anyway. This is exactly why I had trouble before - I attempted to brush down the crystals but was fearful of adding too much water which led to inadequate brushing and ultimately sugar crystalization. He also addressed my second problem on timing with very precise instructions regarding sugar temperature at which to start beating the whites and the beating speed. Other basic recipes I've tried with great success were the tart crust and lemon curd. I used Rose Levy's Beranbaum's recipe for pate sucre in the past but got unsatisfactory results due to the temperature being too high. She says to start with a 425F oven, then switch to 375 after 5 minutes. This resulted in a crust that browned way too quickly around the edges and set very hard. Mr. Pfeiffer tells us to bake at 325 for a longer period of time to encourage water to evaporate without browning leading to a perfectly golden and crumbly crust. Outstanding! I like the organization of this book. Each recipe has a list of ingredients in both metric and volume measures at the top and a list of equipment in a box to the side. Some of the basic recipes that are used repeatedly in multiple recipes are included in the beginning of the book. The paper has a nice quality and the pictures are beautiful though there are not pictures for every recipe. I agree with the other reviewer that noted it would be nice to have additional pictures or line drawings of techniques but that is really my only minus for this book. All in all, I am extremely happy with this purchase. I own a lot of baking books but I think this is going to become my go to manual for most foundational recipes taking over Flo Braker's "The Art of Perfect Baking." I understand this book is nominated for the IACP and the James Beard Award and I hope it wins both of them! UPDATE: Generally, all the recipes I have tried from here have been successful (though a bit too sweet for my taste despite the fact that he says he does not like overly sweet desserts). I did have trouble with the flourless chocolate sponge cake. It came out very flat (less than 1 cm high) and you could barely taste the chocolate (and I used good quality El Rey 65% chocolate). Mine looked nothing like the photo in the book, the one for the hazelnut chocolate verrine, which appears thicker and much darker. Something seems to be off with the recipe. The amount of chocolate (85g) just seems too small to produce a truly chocolatey cake. I remade it using a recipe from another book that uses cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate and it came out much better. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent pastry book on Making the Art of French Pastry *by E***. on October 27, 2014* Great book on making the art of French pastries. Great book with pictures and easy to read writing style of author. Excellent on additional information on buying and using best ingredients. Also learn from Chapter 1 because these are the fundamentals, then master them and move on to the next chapters. I was deeply engaged making puff pastry, cream anglaise and detrempe (making croissants and chocolate croissants). Learning Chapter 1 recipes take time and patience. And practice makes perfect. There are even pictures and paragraphs explaining how to pipe pastries, macarons and other fillings and frost your pastries like a pro pastry chef. Excellent book to invest, all you need is desire, passion, patience and preserverance to learn "The Art of French Pastry". Even a home baker can do this. After a year buying a Kindle version of this book, i bought the hard copy and have tried the recipes on this book. Everything here is amazing. this is a book for the adverturous home cooks who want to learn the art of making French pastries, especially in the region of Alsace. The author is a respected teacher all over the world and his stories, passion and his recipes speaks for itself. It offers the readers delight and also the know-how and some tips and secrets of achieving these delicious morsels. So far, I have tried many recipes in this book by going through the pastry fundamentals, and moving on to what I want to make on the succeeding pastries like tarts, cookies, cakes and the last chapter. all of my friends, family and co-workers tell me these are fantastic. Some of the pastries that I have tried were memorable from my earlier years in Hong Kong where my dad's expat friends would bring sweets and gifts when he host parties. But anyway, I highly recommend this book if you want to learn the Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The great details shared in book!’ *by M***E on November 11, 2025* Great information-especially for beginners of a French pastries ## Frequently Bought Together - The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook - French Patisserie: Master Recipes and Techniques from the Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts - French Boulangerie: Recipes and Techniques from the Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - πŸ›’ **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** β€” Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** β€” Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - πŸ’° **No Hidden Fees** β€” All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - πŸ”„ **15-Day Free Returns** β€” Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - πŸ”’ **Secure Payments** β€” Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** β€” Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.us/products/1578367-the-art-of-french-pastry-a-james-beard-award-winner](https://www.desertcart.us/products/1578367-the-art-of-french-pastry-a-james-beard-award-winner) --- *Product available on Desertcart United States of America* *Store origin: US* *Last updated: 2026-07-19*