Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery Hardcover – October 10, 2000

Is my new obsession!I am anxious to get back into the kitchen and try more recipes; the banana bread alone is worth the price of the cookbook. it ain’t ya Mamma’s banana bread; I’d post a photo but it didn’t last long enough - devoured in about 24 hours. Get the book, bake the bread and then try her other genius recipes.

I love Nancy Silverton. She is the best. Her books are fantastic. Her recipes work! You can watch a video of her and Julia Child make dessert, totally awesomeness. I have all her books and have made most if her breads. I have even made her pizza from Mozza! I'm a fan.

I've found so many recipes want to try that it's tough to choose the first one make. The book is well written, and one I'm sure will be one of my go-to reference books when I'm looking for something that tastes good, looks impressive and is not overly complicated.

I’m enjoying this cookbook and have made the creamed corn cornbread. The book has a wonderful variety of recipes and the recipe instructions have proved accurate. I’m not always satisfied by theCookbooks I’ve purchased for Kindle, but this one has proved easy to use and navigate. The ingredients are easy to find and the recipes appear to have something for everyone (except layer cakes). I was unimpressed by the doughnuts chapter and the lack of pictures throughout the book. I am looking forward to making the English toffee and honeycomb candy from the confections chapter. I’m also looking forward to making both the Russian and the Armenian coffee cakes.

I have baked over half of the recipes in this book: muffins, cookies, candy, cakes, breads and I've loved them all! With the exception of the Toasted Fruit Wedges. I've tried to make those twice and the recipe doesn't seem quite right. I would consider myself an experienced home baker, and I can see where the beginner might have some problems with this book. I don't normally write reviews, but I feel that there are too many negative comments about one of my favorite all time baking books. I own Tartine, Paris Sweets, among numerous others. This book shouldn't be missed. It's a real treat! I've been cooking out of it for many years!

I found lots to love in this cookbook: intriguing recipes and good "Equipment" and "Sources" chapters. I'm not troubled by her equipment recommendations: if you're baking, you expect to need a mold or two, and some of the things she calls for, such as cake and flan rings as well as pastry bags, are incredibly inexpensive (although I'm disappointed she didn't recommend the traditional Ball-jar substitution for cake rings). Pastry brush? She tells us to buy it from the hardware store! Metal pie weights? Dried beans will work just fine. Almost all of her ingredients are already in our pantries, although we might have to pick up some almond paste or pecans. She calls for some specialized ingredients which are easy to find on Amazon or via her Sources: for example, White Lily flour. For one ingredient few of us would have, baker's ammonia, she tells us that baking soda will substitute. On the whole, very accessible ingredients. She even uses canned pumpkin! However, in my Kindle edition, there are some notable negatives: there are fewer than a handful of photos. There is, apparently, no Index. The TOC is clickable, recipes click to "Sources," and embedded recipes are clickable. As for the recipes, although many are accessible to most home cooks, her pastry chapter is not: she's a tart snob, and I say that with a huge smile because I am also a tart snob. A tart is a pie without a safety net: there is no pan. A tart is not what one bakes in a gorgeous white ceramic Williams-Sonoma "tart" pan with scalloped edges: that's still a pie. A tart is baked either in a shell with a removable bottom or, in Silverton's preference, classic French with no bottom whatsoever. I also always make tarts because so few dare to brave tarts, and they are truly superior to pies. So, although the author and I are simpatico as tart snobs, I feel it's important to say that--for pies/tarts, this book, which offers only tart recipes, is not for the novice. If you begin to shake when you start to make pastry dough--as I used to, decades ago--you should make only fail-safe pies, not tarts: that way you only have to worry about how your pie tastes, not whether blueberry filling is going to seep out and cover your oven floor and/or kitchen counter. Moreover, although the author's tart recipes are intriguing, her only "traditional" recipe is for pumpkin pie, so if you're looking for a traditional blueberry or pecan or apple, you're out of luck. Her recipe for brioche is non-traditional, abbreviated, almost as if she expects us to know how slowly the classic recipe adds the butter, but she doesn't tell us (unlike Cook's Illustrated, for example) why her recipe is as good as or a good substitute for the classic. The author also tells us that there is no substitute for puff pastry made the long way, but Julia Child, Patricia Wells, and even the famously-inflexible Madeleine Kamman disagree: all provide recipes for "quick" puff pastry. I've used them, and they work: not the same as the real thing, but WAY better than pate brisee. Finally, there are NO photos or illustrations for either technique or finished dishes (except, I think, for one photo of crackers). So, my recommendation is, if you're tempted to use Chef Silverton's recipe for puff pastry, brioche, or croissants, go ahead, but DO pull out your Julias and use Paul Childs' superb illustrations to guide your way.

I have around 50 Baking cookbooks, even one of the La Brea Bakery cookbook for baking bread. This book will be one of my favorites. I really love these recipes for sweet breads! Can't wait to try the Danish recipes.

I feel enticed and encouraged to start making something for after dinner or to take to my friends. The recipes are enjoyable to read as well.

amazing recipes!

Like the previous reviewer, I bought this book because I liked Nancy Silverton's sourdough breads so much. This is very different with no bread or sourdough in sight; instead, it provides you with some excellent recipes in the following sections: quick cakes and quickbreads, savouries, crisps and crumbles, cookies, scones, muffins, tarts, morning pastries, doughnuts and confections.I have made a fair number of the muffins, quick breads and tarts and have enjoyed the majority of them. Try the sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce - this is the best dessert/pudding I have EVER baked. The book is worth buying for this one recipe alone. It also turned out to be the very first recipe I made from the book and set very high expectations. Unfortunately the book did not live up to them; and while the recipes did result in some lovely, tasty goodies such as the banana-cocoa muffins, the onion tart on puff pastry, or the hazelnut-banana tart, a number of the things I tried were just mediocre (like the country feta pies) or downright unpleasant (like the bran muffins. And yes, it must have been sheer stupidity on my part to imagine that bran muffins can possibly taste of anything other than cardboard shavings. But the problem with Nancy Silverton is that she has a very self-eulogising, self-satisfied, arrogant tone when introducing the recipes. It is also very convincing. So when she said that the "muffin maven herself" has said that her bran muffins are "the best she's ever had" I believed her and was sorely disappointed). This tone persists throughtout the book - most of her recipes start with her criticising other inferior specimens she's eaten and then of course blowing her own trumpet and saying how hers is far superior. It would be fine if this were consistently true, but sadly with a number of recipes this is not the case. It is of course perfectly acceptable in the sticky toffee pudding recipe!!I can safely say that Nancy Silverton is top class when it comes to breads; not so when it comes to cakes, cookies and tarts. Although a fair number really are lovely and suitable for entertaining, many of her recipes sound far better than they taste. However, it is a beautiful book, on thick, yellowing paper, with sepia-tinted photographs to introduce each chapter, and has a wonderful, domestic, old-fashioned feel to it. Just the style and presentation of it merits an extra star (I would have given it 3 just for the content). If you like arty cook books and don't care too much for spectacular results, you will love this one. But if you're after mind-blowing baked goods, you will find quite a few comme-ci comme-cas among a couple of gems.

1冊目の英語版に味を占め、2冊目の甘いパンを買った。この本の写真もモノトーンの芸術性の高いもの。見るだけでうっとり。・・・しかし、カロリー高いものが多いのでいつも作るというわけにはいきませんが、いいな、この本。ナンシーのパンは素敵だな。

Awesome hook

It's good but I'm a professional pastry chef and some of the recipes are not working - but I did some math and was able to fix them. So actually it's a good book for teaching bakers formulas. I wish the author of any book would make everything from the press release because I think all the errors would be discovered before people spent time and money only to bake a failure. I recommend this to my advanced baker friends.