Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes Cookbook | Master French Pastry Techniques at Home | Perfect for Baking Enthusiasts & Home Chefs

Before opening his own pastry shop here in NYC, Ansel was the pastry chef of Restaurant Daniel and prior to that worked at Paris’s Fauchon.

To those illustrious credentials, he added the invention of the cronut, a croissant-donut hybrid for which people still line up before 6:00 am in order to purchase a single one from a tightly limited daily production.

The cronut furor has in a way disguised Ansel’s breadth of creativity, something this handsome, precise book may help dispel. Recipes are arranged by required skill level, progressing from a simple treat like a chocolate-pecan cookie to intermediately challenging pink champagne macarons, to the likes of his own iteration of the kouign ammans (known as a DKA) or some individual pastry-enclosed soufflés, and yes, a home-version of the cronut.

Pastry pros will be gratified to know that measurements are given by weight as well as volume, just as they should be.

Harcover. Color photographs throughout.