Pastries made simple (sort of)
● Durban dough guru gives the French a pasting, unlocks the secrets of croissant-making, pie baking and the art of tarts. Plus tips on ganja edibles…
● Critics rave about a new pastry book by KZN’s sourdough savant. Just in time for Christmas…
Admit it, you’ve been there: Spied the forbidden fruit (as it were); fallen into temptation; and come to reckon with remorse. Baker and restaurateur Adam Robinson is referring here to that singular evil of our times: the petrol station pie.
“A munch that is quickly followed by regret, dissatisfaction and the telltale coating of the upper palate that shouts cheap fats. A coating that can only be removed with a very strong cup of tea or a glass of red wine,” he says.
It’s a shame really because “there is something very seductive about pastry in all its guises”.
The good news is, there’s no need for regrets.
Robinson, who in 2020 shared the secrets of sourdough baking in his sell-out “A Book About Bread”, is back with more wisdom and wit to help you make your own pies, as well as croissants, danishes, biscuits, puff pastry and much more, in “A Book About Pastries”.
Rave reviews
The new book, which was officially launched on 30 October 2024 at The Glenwood Bakery in Durban is already receiving rave reviews, with foodie Erica Platter calling it her “book of the year”.
It includes all the pâtisserie favourites to be found at Robinson’s bakery-cafe, in the south Durban suburb (and at the newish Morningside branch), plus a bunch of other delicacies.
Robinson has again teamed up with his near-neighbour in Glenwood, the award-winning photographer and designer Roger Jardine, and the result is a clear and elegantly presented, step-by-step guide to crafting your own pastries. It needs to be.
Not for sissies
Yes, the book does include a fair few easy recipes for biscuits, cakes and the like, but when all’s said and done, pâtisserie-making is not for sissies.
Take that croissant or pain au chocolat that you like with your coffee so much. Well, the laminated dough that provides its unbeatable light, flaky texture demands folding, rolling and refolding, layer upon alternating layer of butter and dough. More precisely, it’s made from three layers to the power of four (that’s 81 layers of butter).
So to do it right, you’re going to need to man up – exponentially!
You’re going to need “A Book About Pastries”.
Eat your heart out Julia
Robinson says he is unaware of any South African books on pastries published in recent years that might help novice croissant-makers master the process.
He concedes that Julia Child, the celebrated American chef, author, and television personality, is very sound on the subject, but fears the line illustrations in her 1960s and 70s cookbooks can be hard to follow.
Happily, there are no such qualms about “A Book About Pastries”.
Jardine has shot multiple photographs for the different doughs used in the book. These illuminate all the steps that must be followed, while the text supplies the quantities and know-how needed to avoid pastry pratfalls.
Suets you, Sir
The book divides its recipes into three contrasting techniques and historical phases – yeast-risen, egg-lightened, and chemically-risen (think bicarb and baking powder).
Robinson leans more to the older ways here and includes a number of recipes with ingredients that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Mrs Beeton’s Victorian guides.
Purists should rise to the challenge and press their local butcher to assist. But never fear, if the likes of suet (the fat found around ox kidneys) are not available, Robinson suggests more readily available alternatives so you can get on with baking.
Jardine and food stylist Roxanne Robinson (no relation of the author) really bring the subject to life. And the beautifully lit, delightfully plated and sometimes precariously balanced food presented in the book should tempt you into action.
Vaulting ambition
On the subject of balance there’s more than a passing link between pâtisserie and architecture.
In the epigraph, Robinson quotes Antonin Carême, the pre-eminent French chef of the early 19th century: “The fine arts are five in number: music, painting, sculpture, poetry and architecture – of which the principal branch is confectionery.”
It’s perhaps as much a commentary on the artistry and vaulting ambition that goes into fine pastry-making as it is on the occasional conceit of the French.
In fact the whole book is full of digs at the French and sets the record straight on a number of culinary inventions the French erroneously claim credit for (no they didn’t invent the croissant; it hails from Austria) .
But it’s all light-hearted stuff, very much in the tradition of the old rivalry between France and England. Robinson confesses a grudging jealousy for the Gauls, acknowledging that, certainly in the 19th and 20th century the French “reigned supreme in the European firmament of the culinary arts”.
Froggie favourites
So, “A Book About Pastries” is not a book about French pâtisserie – although it will certainly teach you to make pukka Froggie favourites like Madeleines, Brioche Royale and Mille-feuille. Really it’s about recipes from the broader European tradition, including Robinson’s native England (there are recipes for Lardy Cakes, Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, Chelsea Buns and more).
There are nods to other traditions too.
Robinson offers that American favourite, Buttermilk Pancakes (frequently piled high with bacon and maple syrup), a Baked Cheesecake inspired by a 19th century New York recipe and a Brazilian Pão de queijo (a popular cheese bread that put paid to the French claim on choux pastry).
Robinson’s a believer!
There’s even the South African rusk. The author tells how on his first visit to this country he couldn’t fathom this “tooth-breaking dried bread” but having learnt the art of dipping is now a convert.
And finally, towards the close of the book, there’s a page on cooking with ganja – useful tips and tricks to help you adapt some of the book’s recipes to include the famous herb. Robinson says this reflects just how mainstream cannabis edibles have become in Durban.
So yes, lots of recipes but lots of food for thought too.
Robinson quotes Alain Chapel, a giant of 1970s French Cooking, “La Cuisine c’est beaucoup plus que des recettes.” Cooking is much more than recipes.
Porky pies
Food, its production and consumption, is part and parcel of our collective human culture and history. “A Book About Pastries” is alive to this, peppered with fascinating snippets of history, etymology (the brandy in brandy snaps has nothing to do with booze) and economics. There are pithy primers on the biology and the chemistry of cooking (what exactly causes different foods to rise; the wonders of wheat; and why bacteria and fungi are our friends); lots of porky pies exposed, plenty of myth-busting.
Take those croissants for example:
“The appealing and neat legend that the croissant shape was invented to celebrate the raising of the siege of Vienna (or it may have been Budapest) is unfortunately an urban myth. It has been said the early morning bakers heard the tunnelling of the heathens/Sracens/Musulmans (choose your slur) underneath the city walls. They raised the alarm and the enemy of Christendom was defeated,” says Robinson
He reckons the choice of shape is the strangest part of the story: “Almost akin to granting the Reagan and Thatcher descendants the rights to wear a hammer and sickle to celebrate the collapse of the Soviet Empire.”
To top it all there are also lots of amusing anecdotes, including telling observations and confessions from Robinson’s long years in kitchens in England, France and South Africa. Who would have thought petits fours could reduce a grown man nearly to tears?
Why bother?
If all comes back to a subject raised in the introduction to “A Book About Pastries”: Why in this age of the internet does one even bother with writing (or buying) recipe books?
Robinson answers his own question: “Searching through an unlimited choice of recipes… is time-consuming, dispiriting and generally unhelpful.”
You are better off, he reasons, turning to someone who has nearly a half a century playing with and discarding recipes while “immersed in the bottomless world of prandial wonders”.
Robinson likens it to asking Glenn Gould (the celebrated and unusually eccentric pianist) to put a playlist together for you rather than getting lost in the endless choices of Spotify.
If food be the music of love, play on…
What the critics have to say about “A Book About Pastries”
Erica Platter, food writer and co-founder of Platter’s Wine Guide, says:
Eeek! I thought at first. Baking is notoriously precise, and Adam Robinson, once the next even bigger thing on the London foodie scene (celebrity-chef, owner of several restaurants and gastro-pubs, catering companies etc etc until he suddenly decamped to KZN) is going to take it to another level. Too intimidating, too challenging… a quick flip-through yielded mystifying terms, like “chemical cakes” and “leavening by lamination”…
But. I am thrilled to be proved utterly, completely, totally wrong. This is now, for me, the one and only baking book I need. I was sold even before the last chapter, which is, of course (though no other cook/chef/writer has dared to document it before) Baking with Ganja.
Adam is a fabulous cook. His and wife Carin’s two bakeries/cafes in Glenwood and Florida Road would be roaring successes anywhere in the world, such is the quality of their baking. And Durban has not dumbed him down in other ways, either.
His wit and erudition shine through in the unlikeliest places, like instructions for rolling out dough. His histories of various pastries are acute, scholarly, intellectual but absorbingly digestible.. His personal confessions, such as his “rapprochement with rusks”, amusing. His inspirations – biscotti flavoured with Pernod, hazelnuts, fennel and coriander seeds – inspirational. His chosen quotes (when last did you encounter a baking book studded with literary and historical allusions?) delightful: “A good croissant is one of the highlights of a well-ordered day”. (Oh and btw, the croissant is originally from Austria, Adam reveals.) His turn of phrase original and striking: … ” crisp to the point of ascetism”…
I personally appreciate the ownership he takes of his new home in his writing: that oh-so-French financier is “lovely with your bottle of medium-dry sparkling on a Durban afternoon”… and he recommends storing Mrs Robinson’s Fruit Cake, “in Durban during the summer, in your fridge”.
Ja, nee, this is NOT your average baking book.
The superb photographs, taken by friend, neighbour, collaborator in Adam’s previous A Book About Bread, are by Roger Jardine.
And Ingrid Shevlin, Durban restaurant critic, says:
“An inspirational look at how to recreate some of the great classic French pastries, with a nod to a few non-French options. While the book with its delightfully witty commentary so synonymous with Adam, does include basic pasty recipes, the focus is more on offering recipes for treats that will win over new friends. Think of an orange and almond cake, pork pies, brioche buns, croissants, mille-feuilles, financiers, choc chip cookies and more. So less about nourishing the body and more about feeding the soul. What’s not to love?”
Where to get a copy
The book is available from The Glenwood Bakery and its Morningside branch.
It can also be ordered from the bakery by e-mailing adam.jn.robinson@gmail.com
Or from Exclusive Books
Price: R295 including VAT.
“A Book About Bread” (First edition 2020; second impression 2024)
Also available from The Glenwood Bakery.
It can also be ordered from the bakery by e-mailing adam.jn.robinson@gmail.com
Price: R295 including VAT.
About the authors
Adam Robinson started cooking in restaurants in 1981, mostly in London, occasionally in France. He opened his first restaurant in 1991 and since 1993 has always baked bread in-house. He has worked in the pastry section of at least two Michelin-starred restaurants, though he has resisted the temptation to include recipes in this book that are impossible to execute at home.
Roger Jardine is an award-winning photographer living in the leafy suburb of Glenwood. His youngest daughter Hope was born in the year Adam opened the bakery in Esther Roberts Road. Jardine works across a range of photographic disciplines but loves shooting food, especially the Chocolate Swiss Roll.
About The Glenwood Bakery
Adam Robinson opened a small bread bakery (a boulangerie) in 2013. As the years have passed the quantity, variety and quality of the food have improved. Along with slow fermented breads, it now offers cakes, tarts and other sweetmeats, the most popular of which are in the new “A Book About Pastries”.
There are two sites in Durban: one in Glenwood and one in Morningside. Both have a shop and a cafe.
Contacts
For general media inquiries or to request further pictures or details, call or WhatsApp Sonya Jardine at +27 83 809 3982 or Matthew Hattingh at +27 84 326 3508.
If you would like to know more about the book or interview either of the authors, or if you would like to obtain a copy of “A Book About Pastries” for review, call or WhatsApp Adam Robinson at +27 72 614 6081, or email adam.jn.robinson@gmail.com .
