Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen 4th Edition?!
Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen 4th Edition?
Hi, I come across a baking reference book by Wayne Gisslen and am pretty impressed by the technical content. Although I am not a professional baker, I can be considered a serious enthusiast in baking and am always eager to find out ways to improve my baking skills. I find that Waynes's approach to writing this book is extremely user-friendly and what surprises me is that recipes are reported using the weight scale of measurement instead of the volumetric scale. I find that this is a more accurate and objective way of measuring the amount of ingredients we put in during baking as any slight differences in the amounts used could result in significantly difeerent tastes. Does anyone here have come across this book? Care to share with me what are your own personal thoughts after reading the book? Thanks!
Answers:
Buy it!
It is the standard baking text book in many culinary schools. After graduation most culinary students keep it and add it to
their own personal culinary reference libraries; which is why it's really hard to find used.
There are a couple of important things you need to know when using the book;
Really work hard on doing the bakers percentages exercises correctly bc as a home cook you will have lots of recipes to convert to much smaller quantities.
Diastatic malt is available thru King Arthur Flour. If you are not familiar with the company you should be.
Any recipe that calls for steam will have a different outcome in a standard home oven, But will still work.
Ideally you will use a bakers scale to scale out your ingredients.
Large restaurant supply stores that sell used equipment are a good source of locating one
Gisslen also has a book called Professional Cooking which too is the standard textbook in many culinary schools.
That too is hard to find used.
If you like technical cooking books , Wiley Publishing is a great source of no bs books for the food service professional.Definetly check them out.
Enjoy the book.
Source(s):
me - been there