Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Does anyone have this book? I saw it on Amazon and am very curious!

A few people on the previous PPK boards bought it and were sorely disappointed. A lot of the photos appeared to be stock and not representational of the actual recipes.

I have it. At some point I'll make something, but it seems so complicated.

It's... not the best.

oh no I am sorry to hear that stock photos what the heck?! in the book itself or for the front cover...for the front cover i can understand but in the book.
I am still sorry to hear that though

The book itself doesn't have any photos- it's just black and white drawings. The cover has picture of macarons that are not vegan- i think Messyveggie (and maybe others?) tried out that recipe and no way did it produce the macarons featured.

I have it, never used it. It's everything bad about self-published books. The crepe typography and production quality alone have kept me from actually endeavoring to try any of the recipes.

They're black and white photos, don't know if your edition differs. But they're fairly crepe quality.

nah, you're right. i was just too lazy to look it up properly. Still, they're shiitake either way!

This. I just made a trip to France and maybe I am trying out some of their doughs. But maybe I'll look for recipes online instead.

I wish I would have waited on this purchase. I was really excited about the idea of the book and once I received it, I was disappointed. Nothing about it is inviting.

i recently purchased the book and was psyched to see a recipe for Madeleines. I know there's a (fairly popular) blogger trying to get her vegan version right. I can't wait to try it.

Which blogger?

I wish I'd seen this thread before ordering it as well. I can't say there's anything I would expect in a vegan french bakery cookbook that isn't there, exactly, but I haven't made anything yet and it's really one of the least accessible cookbooks I own. I'm dismayed that so many of the recipes seem like bijective veganizations (for the non-math nerds, I mean that it seems like they took regular recipes and just veganized them ingredient by ingredient, like pepperoni->vegan pepperoni! cheese->vegan cheese!). I find the lack of appealing photos, while not a dealbreaker, makes it tough to jump in and want to make something. There aren't any blurbs by each recipe, so I find myself having to google what a "fougasse" or a "mouilette" even is. The recipes are NOT at all Americanized. I lived in Europe and have a scale so I can mostly deal with this OK, but my scale isn't precise so I tend to shy from recipes that measure everything out by weight. When I break down and FINALLY buy a nutritional scale I may suddenly start using half my cookbooks I've ignored. Plus it really just seems like they assume that you've eaten all these things and probably made them in non-vegan versions and know what to expect things to look, feel, and taste like at each step. I'm sure thee are plenty of American cookbooks with the same flaws where I take these things for granted, but gosh, how intimidating. I've been to France a few times but I still couldn't tell you what half the stuff is supposed to look like without googling it.

It's not completely vegan and it's not a bakery cookbook, but for anyone looking for more inviting French veg cookbooks, I really like "The Vegetarian Bistro." It doesn't have photos either, but I love blurbs before recipes explaining why the author included them and it's just so much more accessible.

Yes! I just leafed through it again and noticed that there are no introductory blurbs to the recipes. I can deal without pictures but this is very annoying. I'll need to google all the stuff and hand-write notes into the book. The only reference to a Croque-Monsieur I have is from Futurama, and I didn't know it was a sandwich til now.

Another 'wish I'd seen this before buying.' I've had it several months now and nothing has really inspired me; it seems like I could just as easily have looked up a bunch of omni recipes and subbed vegan margarine and soya milk for the dairy ingredients, really. Might still have a go at the pain au chocolat or almond croissants from it sometime, though.

For those looking for madeleines, the new Babycakes Covers the Classics book apparently has a recipe. I don't own the book and haven't tried it, just throwing that out there. (I actually have the first Babycakes cookbook and haven't made anything out of that because of the GF flours purchasing barrier, but the new book's recipes look more intrinsically interesting to me)