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Homemade brioche

Imagine a world where people could sell food prepared in their own kitchens. Sounds like a pre-Industrial Revolution bake sale, but it could very well be the near future. That is, if the Cottage Food Bill passes. The California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616), which is currently in Congress, would make California the 33rd state to support cottage food.

The legislation, which was introduced in February, would allow those who get permits to cook and sell their homemade foods directly to consumers or at farmers markets -- but not just any items. Food must be "non-potentially hazardous food," in other words, foods such as baked goods, jam, granola, popcorn, herb and tea blends, nut mixes and dried fruit. Purveyors still must obtain permits and would be required to provide a list of all ingredients and, in some cases, an expiration date on the goods they sell.

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Amy Silverstein

Passover rolls

Why is this holiday different from all other holidays? For starters, you eat a lot of matzo. Passover, which begins tonight with the first seder or holiday feast, commemorates the exodus of the ancient Israelites from Egypt, after they were freed from slavery. According to tradition, they were forced to leave in such a hurry, that there was no time for their bread dough to rise. Because of that, eating bread or anything leavened is a no-no for the eight days of the holiday.

Typically, on the first night, matzo is a pleasant and crunchy change of pace. By day three or four --- not so much. That's when you start to have un-kosher daydreams about sandwiches. To help keep observers of Passover from having another sin to atone for at Yom Kippur, we're delighted that cookbook author and pastry chef Marcy Goldman shared with us her recipe for a fun holiday treat, special rolls made from matzo meal.

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amazon.com

Those summer berry and fall holiday pies may get all of the seasonal baking attention, but spring really is the ideal time to Pie It Forward, isn't it? There are those rainy weekends best left to indoor dough rolling, the partly cloudy ones that aren't quite ready for berry picking outings, and those between-seasons sort of days when you really need a slice of Yin Yang cheesecake (in matcha tea and mango form, p. 132) to pull it all together.

Or, should you be more of a tart, torte or galette weekend baker, Gesine Bullock-Prado's new cookbook has plenty of blueberry brown butter and macadamia-coconut-caramel ideas -- even a few savory ones like potato sausage pie and Bavarian calzones filled with chicken, Camembert cheese, lingonberry preserves and aioli with a touch of maple syrup (!) for an added sweet kick.

Yeah, in case you're wondering, Bullock-Prado runs a lot of marathons. And yes, Sandra Bullock is her sister (A Hollywood pie diet! Now that would be fun).

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Carl Lender/flickr

Bagels by Lender's

Lender's Bagels are simultaneously mushy and dense, insipid pucks of dough with holes in the middle. There's no point in comparing a once-frozen Lender's bagel and the puffed-up, chewy specimens a real bagelry turns out. Still, Murray Lender, son of the label's founder, deserves accolades for expanding the family business from a mere bakery into a household name. Lender died late last week. Judging from the accounts we've read, he was better than his bagels.

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The Domestic Scientist

The Deathwing cake!

What happens when your encounter the Deathwing in the massively popular role-playing game World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm? It's a dragon that rains flaming death from above. You die, your raid party dies, and the entire virtual world feels its wrath. Back in the meat world, you can take revenge by baking the Deathwing cake and eating it too.

Meet full-time mom, amateur cake-baker, and Huntsville, Alabama-based blogger Renée White of The Domestic Scientist who'll share some tips for crafting your own World of Warcraft-inspired cake.

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CakeSpy

Rainbow Cake From "CakeSpy"

We all have a friend or two who is in dire need of being weaned from their Martha Stewart entertaining habits or persistent Rachael Ray cookie book fixes. But handing them the latest crémeux-filled pastry book from Michel Roux is only going to send them into "I can't do it, I need Martha!" baking relapses. It's time for one last Baking Style and CakeSpy shot.

Neither book is going to be revolutionary for an experienced baker, but a revolutionary baking book is not what you need here. For some friends, you need sheer silliness to get your point across. Maybe even a slim little paperback book like CakeSpy: Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life by illustrator and blogger Jessie Oleson that can help the Martha-addicted realize the lunacy of making cute decorations for every edible that comes out of their oven.

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amazon

Normally, baking books by top restaurant pastry chefs, at least the Michelin-star type, are big. And glossy. As with the previous cookbooks from French pastry chef and former London restaurateur Michel Roux (his son now runs La Gavroche restaurant), you needed those gorgeous super-sized photos to convince you to take the time to actually make that chocolate mousse filled with lavender crémeux and served with a mixed berry compote. A time-consuming mouthful.

The beauty of Roux's new cookbook, Desserts, is that it is small. Not quite stocking-stuffer small, but small enough for that caramel bavarois with saffron roasted apples to peek out of the top of a stocking.

And don't let that brownie recipe on the cover photo lead you astray. Desserts is definitely "Oh my gosh, you really got me this?!" worthy.

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Just in time for holiday baking, pie-maker Michele Stuart offers Perfect Pies: The Best Sweet and Savory Recipes From America's Pie-Baking Champion (Ballantine Books, $25). Stuart opened the first Michele's Pies in Norwalk, Conn. in December 2007. Since then, she has won 26 National Pie Championship awards (mostly first place). In March 2011 she opened a second shop in Westport, Conn. She and her pies have been featured in The New York Times and on Good Morning America and the Food Network.

The 224-page tome, her first book, includes more than 80 recipes, including instructions for fruit, nut, cream, savory, sugar-free (sweetened with Splenda) and "party" pies, as well as a "fail-proof" crust recipe. Selections include a Pineapple-Mango Pie With Macadamia-Coconut Crumb, Chocolate Peanut Butter Dream Pie, Strawberry Glace Pie, Australian Beef Pie (savory) and Eggnog Pie (party).

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J. Kelley

pie crust + pie

For some reason, making piecrust scares people. Bakers who confidently turn out fancy frosted and piped layer cakes and cooks who can sauté and deglaze with the best of us balk at humble pie dough. Every year as Thanksgiving approaches, friends drop by for impromptu pie and crust tutorials. I run them through the basics and stand supportively by as they see for themselves what coarse meal and moist clumps look like. I always use my classic pie dough recipe, a simple blend of unbleached flour, kosher salt, butter, vegetable shorting and water. This is great dough with good butter flavor and flaky texture from the shortening.

But this year, I may be handing out a new recipe: one that might be easier for pie newbies to make. The quiche at Forage in Silver Lake has a really good, buttery-short pate brisee crust. It tastes so tender, I thought for sure that along with scads of butter there must be few ounces of lard or shortening cut in there too, but Forage pastry chef, Kristin Ferguson assures me, the pastry is made only with butter.

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jgarbee

The Perfect Mushroom

As we can imagine few things more miserable than stepping foot in any retail store on the busiest shopping day of the year, we will be spending the day after Thanksgiving drafting our holiday baking plan of action. Baking Friday, if you will. Up this year: Buche de Noël.

Home baking frustrations with the French classic rarely stem from the cake recipe, which is essentially a chocolate sponge cake with chocolate filling and dark chocolate ganache frosting. It's those marzipan mushrooms. For starters, they're so dense and saccharine sweet, they don't pair well with such a rich chocolate cake. And by the time you finish sculpting the icing into edible chocolate tree bark, those Black Friday lines sound like more fun than making tiny mushrooms one by one. But what would a holiday forest be without mushrooms? And they're so darn cute.

For professional help (yes, baking frustrations do sometimes require therapy), we turned to L.A. chocolatier and master pastry chef Yvan Valentin, formerly of L'Orangerie fame, who supplies his handmade Buche de Noël cakes to local high-end hotel restaurants (Casa del Mar, L'Ermitage, Andaz West Hollywood among them). Get his mushroom tricks and the easy do-ahead (and tasty) recipe after the jump.

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