Free (nook/Kindle) The Perfect Croissant: Fabulous Fillings [Single Dish Cookbook]

[ATDrake]

The Perfect Croissant: Step-By-Step Instructions Plus Fabulous Fillings by Dee Coutelle is her cookbook full of sweet and savoury versions of Exactly What It Says In The Title, free courtesy of publisher Agate's Digital imprint.

Quite frankly, this seems to misunderstand the point of what a croissant is, IMHO, and while I will not say that filling them with chicken salad to make sandwiches is necessarily an abomination unto $DEITYWHICHIDONTBELIEVEIN, I don't think that's really an idea in keeping with the spirit of croissant-hood, nor is braiding them into wreath shapes while still calling them croissants, (croissant means "crescent" in French for a reason†, just so you know, and if you want to significantly deviate from what it means, you might as well just call your resulting dishes "puff pastry whatevers").

And there's a disappointing lack of photos in the portions I skimmed. But if you completely ignore the entire form follows function thing, there might possibly be some tasty variants of misnamed generic baked goods in here. YMMV.

Anyway, currently free, probably just until the weekend @ B&N (also UK) & Amazon (not available to Canadians, but also free in the UK). Price-drop-check linkage for iTunes & Google Play (usually only available for the US; I think that's the right URL), where Agate freebies have also been turning up in recent weeks.

Description
From French cuisine to American brunches, croissants are a staple of many sumptuous meals. But few home cooks understand how to create the perfect balance of light, buttery dough with delicately flaky layers. Culinary instructor Dee Coutelle has been specializing in croissants for over 30 years, and will reveal her pastry secrets in this digital update of The Perfect Croissant.

In this delightful book, readers will find croissants surprisingly easy to create, mostly taking far less than an hour of working time. The first section of the book is devoted to the foundational recipe for the perfect croissant, providing helpful photographs and illustrations to demystify each step.

From there, The Perfect Croissant features over 70 recipes for fillings, toppings, and variations, including both sweet and savory options. Readers will find recipes for sweet apple turnovers, almond butter-filled pastries, Chicken en Croute (chicken wrapped in flaky croissant dough), and many more ideas within pages of each other. For cooks looking to experiment, the book contains a chapter on novel croissant forms, offering detailed instructions on how to create a croissant in exciting shapes.

The Perfect Croissant will liven up brunch receptions with pinwheel-shaped croissants filled with custard, spice up cocktail hour with egg-roll croissant hors d'oeuvres, and enrich dessert with chocolate dough croissants filled with liquored fudge,and topped with a chocolate glaze.

† It's a celebratory post-war-with-historical-religious-connotations victory food shape, therefore making it banned by modern sore loser fundamentalists who should probably just retaliate by appropriating the devouring of hot cross buns as a symbolic conquest or whatever.

[GtrsRGr8]

Strange that Canadians are excluded, what with the number of citizens of French background being so large in the eastern part of Canada (Quebec even having French as the province's official language, if I am not mistaken).

Thanks for all of your great posts. You post many ebooks that I do not run across anywhere else.

[Purple Lady]

Why didn't you post this in the free/bargain Cookbook 2015 thread?

[ATDrake]

Well, now also dropped to free @ iTunes (not available to Canadians). Linkage in OP.

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Strange that Canadians are excluded, what with the number of citizens of French background being so large in the eastern part of Canada (Quebec even having French as the province's official language, if I am not mistaken).

We used to get Agate freebies in Canada several years ago, but no longer. But at least now our former colonial oppressors across the pond can enjoy them, which they weren't able to before?

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Why didn't you post this in the free/bargain Cookbook 2015 thread?

Because Agate freebies tend to stick around for the better part of a week (and are sometimes month-long specials that I can mark with the "long-term freebie" tag which I go through and prune every couple of weeks), repeat several months to years later, and sometimes show up in additional stores/regions after going free in the original ones, and it's easier for me personally to alert my fellow MR members of those things this way, if they're interested.

If there's anything that anyone feels would benefit from being re-posted to a megathread, I don't mind if they do.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Well, now also dropped to free @ iTunes (not available to Canadians). Linkage in OP.



We used to get Agate freebies in Canada several years ago, but no longer. But at least now our former colonial oppressors across the pond can enjoy them, which they weren't able to before?



Because Agate freebies tend to stick around for the better part of a week (and are sometimes month-long specials that I can mark with the "long-term freebie" tag which I go through and prune every couple of weeks), repeat several months to years later, and sometimes show up in additional stores/regions after going free in the original ones, and it's easier for me personally to alert my fellow MR members of those things this way, if they're interested.

If there's anything that anyone feels would benefit from being re-posted to a megathread, I don't mind if they do.

I just don't check anything other than the sticky threads usually, so I could have missed this one. It seems like most of the books here are Christian books, so I don't bother.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I just don't check anything other than the sticky threads usually, so I could have missed this one. It seems like most of the books here are Christian books, so I don't bother.

Well, if it's any help, I can start marking new and repeat freebies with a genre tag like, say "food/cookbook freebie" that you can just bookmark and check every so often.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Well, if it's any help, I can start marking new and repeat freebies with a genre tag like, say "food/cookbook freebie" that you can just bookmark and check every so often.

I use Tapatalk, so I don't think genre tags would help.

[GtrsRGr8]

For the benefit of those who may be making the croissants and want to make sure that they pronounce it correctly when they serve some to their friends, let me attempt to tell you how it is pronounced. At least it will be close enough that your friends aren't going to know the difference. ha. It is approximately cr-wah-son. Try to pronounce "son" nasally.

I just realized that I've been pronouncing it wrong all of these years! I've been pronouncing the "t," but in French if the word ends in a consonant, it is not pronounced. Je suis une personne stupide!

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I just realized that I've been pronouncing it wrong all of these years! I've been pronouncing the "t," but in French if the word ends in a consonant, it is not pronounced.

Just to make things more fun, there is a language feature* called liaison where the normally-silent final consonants are indeed pronounced, if the following word in a phrase or combination starts with a vowel. So if you had been ordering, say, "un croissant et une tasse de café", you'd have been reasonably correct† in pronouncing the "t".

* It's a feature, not a bug!

† There's a certain amount of dialectal variation in what gets liaised or not and where.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Just to make things more fun, there is a language feature* called liaison where the normally-silent final consonants are indeed pronounced, if the following word in a phrase or combination starts with a vowel. So if you had been ordering, say, "un croissant et une tasse de café", you'd have been reasonably correct† in pronouncing the "t".

* It's a feature, not a bug!

† There's a certain amount of dialectal variation in what gets liaised or not and where.

That is correct! Basically, you run two words together and make one of it when you pronounce it. I had forgotten that when I stated the rule. But, I would have done it without really thinking about it for some applicable word pairs, ones that got drilled in in French courses. I didn't know that there were differences among French speakers in which ones got liaised or not. But it's not surprising. I suppose that it varies by region.

[murg]

Who cares how you pronounce it, they're delicious!