Art of French baking is still alluring after all these years

French bread sticks.

The Blade/Lori King
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Editor's note: The original version of this article misstated the title of the cookbook. The correct title is "The Art of French Baking."

French cookies.

The one thing I don't need is another cookbook.

At any given time, my bookshelves are weighed down with at least 150 of them. When they grow to be about 200, we give the surplus away.

But there I was, in one of my favorite stores in Chicago, and a cookbook was calling to me. It wasn't even a bookstore, it was a store that sells cool dinnerware and a host of related items, mostly from Europe. It only sells a couple of cookbooks, but one of these was calling.

I've had a lot of experience in this, and usually I can resist. I've even resisted the same book from the same store, when the siren's song was just as strong. But this time, as if by some sort of supernatural source, I was compelled to give in.

The book is The Art of French Baking, by Ginette Mathiot, and it is in fact compiled from two books Mme. Mathiot wrote in the 1930s. Je Sais Cuisiner, (I Know How to Cook) written in 1932 when she was just 25, was a huge best-seller. Six years later, she wrote one of her many follow-ups, Je Sais Faire La Patisserie (I Know How to Make Pastries), specifically focusing on sweet baked goods.

These books sold millions of copies because they did not feature the fanciest recipes or re-creae the experience of eating at a restaurant. They were meant for housewives and husbands wanting to cook traditional French food.

Of course, traditional French food is fabulous, which is why the book appealed to me so strongly. And the recipes in the book were all so easy and made with comparatively few ingredients. So I bought it. Could millions of French cooks be wrong?

As it turns out, non. This is one of those rare books in which you want to try every single recipe — just because they look so good, not in an obsessive, Julie and Julia way.

So I dug in, starting with something that looked like macarons and sort of sounded like macarons, but were instead marzipan cookies. Macarons are those impossibly light, almond meringue cookies filled with delightfully flavored creams that are all the rage in bakeries both here and in France. But that is the problem: They are notoriously difficult to make and are probably best left to professionals. In other words, they are not the sort of easy dish featured in the book.

The marzipan cookies, though, are much the same idea. They are a heavier version of macarons, though not as heavy as actual marzipan candy. They are made from almond flour (blanch your own raw almonds, remove the skins with a quick little snap, and then grind the nuts), sugar, and egg whites. Where macarons are delicate, these are dense and chewy, but just (or nearly) as delicious.

French bread sticks.

For the chocolate cream filling, I used Mme. Mathiot's recipe for ganache, the glossy, all-purpose chocolate topping. But whereas most ganaches are created by stirring cream into melted chocolate, hers uses butter and the rich and slightly tangy creme fraiche. This substitution gives the chocolate a little more body and assertiveness; it is, as they say, magnifique.

Happy with the book already, I decided to make something savory and even easier. One chapter of the book is devoted to crackers, but the French idea of crackers is not the same as ours. As it says in the book, their crackers are "plainer than sweet cookies," and "can be served along with hors d'oeuveres, or with cheese after a meal." In other words, they are more than a cracker, but less than a cookie.

They are also, at least in the case of Savory Sticks, utterly addictive. Nothing more than flour, milk, butter, and salt, they are thin and a bit chewy. The extraordinary flavor and texture comes when the dry ingredients are dumped all at once into the warm liquid ingredients and then, after they are thoroughly stirred together, the dough is allowed to rest for an hour before baking.

I had some creme fraiche left over from making the ganache, so I decided to make creme fraiche cookies. That's maybe not the best reason to make something, but for these particular cookies, any excuse will do.

Ultra-crispy creme fraiche cookies are an excellent example of what this book is all about. They are not something you would find at a patisserie, they are what the average Frenchman would make at home. From start to finish they can be made in 20 minutes, depending on how long it takes your oven to preheat, they only require four ingredients, and they taste delightfully fresh and wholesome. They're irresistible.

The only thing better than making them is eating them. But don't eat too many of them at a time — these things are truly sinful.

I should take my own advice. From now on, I am going to bake my way through this book a little bit at a time.