Bourke Street Bakery: The Ultimate Baking Companion

Pretty good recipes but on the kindle version there are no page numbers so getting around and finding the recipes is very difficult.

Tis bookis wonderful there's a Littleton breads like sourdough which looks at everyday starters, also at heated breads, not a lot but enough for those wantingto look at bread and alotof variations for the more advance but wanting to modern flavors. A loton tarts, few cookies, few simple cakes, and a lot of savory, pies, empanadas, sausage rolls, and things with an English and mostly Australian flounce. Gives a bit of local story telling of Sidney and Burke street in Melbourne. Love this book for the assume influence. Great true professional baking book not this let's bake simple terrible recipes. There are professional true recipes for those whatif to advance in their craft. Great full page pics for most every recipe. Highly recommend it

I thought I had enough bread baking books, but upon recommendations at the [...] I treated myself and enjoy it every time I pick it up to check out new recipes. Results of tried recipes are A+. Beautiful !

I have tried five of the recipes in this book and they have all turned out awesome. The recipes are precise and detailed, yet not too long.

Finally an honest bakery book that is happy to share their recipes that work and are delicious too. this will get a lot of work

I can cook anything now very entertaining, and very informative. I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in baking of any kind.

I love this bakery and frequent Neutral Bay and Surry Hills often.To find my favourite food recipes in a cookbook was wonderful.Ofcourse, my hands aren't as talented as theirs but that is BSB's charm and why I continue to go back!

I'm giving this review based on the pastries since there are certain issues that are just puzzling/infuriating.The recipes were adapted for the home baker (and I also think for people outside of Australia and the UK because you simply cannot find that double cream in the US), so they changed formulas a bit to work with 35% cream. I'm not sure they tested enough because yeah, they work, but they are definitely on the loose side, such as the lemon filling. Tasty, but not as firm as it would be with that 45% cream.What really irks me is they admit the fillings are finicky (the ginger brûlée one being easy to undercook and overcook), but they couldn't be bothered putting precise temperatures! If you want to ensure success for your readers, take the guesswork out! You're going to want that lemon filling at around 180 degrees.Then they don't call for straining a filling that is made with whole eggs rather than yolks. It doesn't matter how careful you are, when you use whole eggs, you should be straining your curd.Where I'm really annoyed is their pate brisee. I already have a foolproof pie dough, but I thought I'd give theirs a try just for the sake of being faithful to the recipe. Even though it included vinegar, which is a no-no when you want a tender crust (in spite of various erroneous internet sources claiming otherwise). Here, from Cook's Illustrated for those who insist on claiming vinegar makes flaky, tender crust:"As for using vinegar and lemon juice, the idea is that gluten formation is inhibited at lower pH values. But through testing and research, we found that this is not the case. In fact, between a pH of 7 (neutral) and 5 (slightly acidic), gluten formation is actually increased. It's only after you get below a pH of 5 that gluten formation is inhibited. Unfortunately, this would require adding almost 6 tablespoons of lemon juice (or vinegar, both with a pH around 2.3) to the pie crust, making it inedibly sour."So anyway, I went ahead with it. I'm no stranger to fraissage (the technique of smearing the fat), and I'm more than comfortable making pie crust, so I know I didn't screw this up. The result was a tough crust. A flaky crust, but a tough one. Many would call it crisp, but believe me, there is a difference between crisp and just tough, and thanks to that vinegar, Bourke's pie crust is tough.Don't even bother and use an actual perfect pie crust (see Serious Eats' foolproof pie dough recipe, which relies on actual sound science; I converted it to grams and adjusted the sugar and fat accordingly to be more like what BSB uses).Also their crust is under-salted.Finally, some of the waiting they insist on is unnecessary. In a pro bakery it makes sense because they have so much production, so they're not actually waiting around for that one thing, but rather getting on with the rest of their work. At home, there's really no need to wait for lemon filling to chill overnight. It was no more thick than it was when it had cooled completely a few hours after it was made.As far as I can tell the cakes and breads look very solid, as do the savory pastries. I wish they would have bothered with a shot of the crumb of the croissants, since it's the honeycomb interior that marks a great croissant, so I have no way of knowing if I should ever bother with theirs!

This cookbook contains recipes for sourdoughs, yeasted breads, cakes, tarts, muffins and biscuits. The recipes do work, which is always nice in a cookbook. However, for me, the reason I do not give it 5 stars is that in some places it is needlessly complicated, whereas in others necessary detail is skimmed over. For example, the mixing of the white sourdough bread by hand involves 20 minutes kneading without salt, 20 minutes resting and another 20 minutes kneading with salt. To anyone familiar with the Dan Lepard method of mixing/kneading dough, they will know that 40 minutes of kneading dough by hand is unnecessary at best and torturous at worst. (And yes, the recipes still works with 4 quick kneads at 10 minute intervals).Another thing to mention is that all the rising times given for breads are for an Australian kitchen (recipes do note dough temperatures, room temperatures and rising times, however room temperatures generally exceed what may be found in a typical English kitchen). In these instances, it is not unreasonable to expect that breads will take longer to double in size than the timings given; I've never known a sourdough to double in size over the course of an hour.Subjects which are "skimmed" over a little include how to maintain the leaven/sourdough starter, along with when it should be refreshed before use. Also, the instructions on how to make croissants (and other things with laminated dough) are probably not detailed enough for a beginner to get really good results, without doing some further research.

Up until using this book I had battled with a number of recipes for croissants, none very successfully! This one did it for me though. I was so pleased I sent them a photo of my bakes and got a response back very quickly. Also the olive oil bread is so versatile, and the sourdough starter recipes so straightforward, and then there are the tarts and yeasted doughs as well. with over 300 cookery books on the shelt this has become my number one book for baking bread and similar.

This book has been my wife's handy helper for when the grandchildren come to visit, and also she gets it out for the children to make the cakes and biscuits for them to eat and give to their mum.

Bought on Kindle and approximately a third of the book is missing with blank pages, interrupted recipes etc. Although the recipes that are there, do taste great.

The book is very detailed and explained. I highly recommend it. However I am not happy with Amazon delivery because the package was open. I've used for first and last time the Amazon Prime.