Clarissa Wei

Squid ink bread

At first glance, the pastry looks far from appetizing. The exterior is a steely black color and out from the middle, a green, mucus-like spread of garlic oozes out from the freshly baked crust. It's an ugly specimen of pastry -- but a cult-favorite among customers.

It's really just a glorified garlic bread, but the slightly briny flavor of squid ink makes all the difference. The formal title is the Japanese Calamari Stick, a squid ink-based bread stuffed with Vermont sharp cheddar cheese and a garlic spread on top. The best part? They're only 65-cents each. (Oh, and the squid ink. But we're admittedly biased.)

We finally got our hands on this elusive bread after an early morning visit to the 85°C Bakery Café's new West Covina location. Customers were stocking up on the pastry, often piling up more than five on their plates.

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Flickr/Teuobk

Freshly baked bread

A Texas company says it has found a way to keep bread fresh and mold-free for two months, the Associated Press reports.

The device, called MicroZap, bombards bread with microwaves for about 10 seconds, killing mold spores. The process could eliminate the need for preservatives and ingredients used to cover up the taste of the preservatives, said MicroZap Inc. CEO Don Stull.

Researchers also say the device would be great for use in developing countries, where spoilage is more of a problem.

"It could help us provide an abundant food source for those in need," Mindy Brashear, director of Texas Tech University's Center for Food Industry Excellence, told the AP. Brashear, a microbiology professor, helped develop the technology over the last eight years with exactly that goal in mind.

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A. Scattergood

For some of us, baking bread is something that we do without much thought, whenever it's cold enough to crank the oven, for giving to friends, when our kids demand it, or as a coping mechanism (see: the recent election, long distance relationships, Steve Nash). The smell of bread baking is a fundamental thing, as is the taste of a warm loaf, yeasty and buoyant and with a crust golden and resoundingly crisp.

Bread baking also a pretty inexpensive hobby, and in this era of renewed interest in DIY projects and artisan whatsits, not a bad one to take up. If you don't give the breads you bake to friends, you can aid and abet your friends' interest in the craft. Of course you don't need much in the way of fancy gear to bake a good loaf of bread -- a bowl, an oven, the most basic of ingredients -- but there are some things that make the experience infinitely more rewarding. Turn the page for five of them, for your friends this holiday season. Or for yourself.

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Flickr/SubtlePanda

pizza

You've probably heard of The Magnificent Seven, but what about The Salty Six?

The saltiest foods might not be the ones you expect (French fries? Pretzels? Flamin Hot Cheetos?), according to the American Heart Assn. The group has singled out the "Salty Six" -- common foods that may be loaded with excess sodium, which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. Some shockers: bread, chicken and sandwiches.

"Excess sodium in our diets has less to do with what we're adding to our food and more to do with what's already in the food," Linda Van Horn, a research nutritionist at Northwestern University and an AHA volunteer, said in a press release. "The average individual is getting more than double the amount of sodium that they need."

Turn the page for salt's Most Wanted.

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jgarbee

Breads on Windrose Farm's truck

For the second installment of our series on cooking with farmers, farm stand workers, farm hands and anyone else regularly heading home with piles of fantastic produce, we bring you a recipe for a great cornbread -- made with stone-ground polenta. We (literally) bumped into it last week in the back of Windrose Farm's truck at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market.

Stand employee Amanda Broder, who also happens to be a pastry chef, brought the brunch-worthy bread as a refueling snack for the stand's employees. (Sorry, Broder's rotating snacks are not available for public nibbling due to health code regulations and free-sample sanity issues.) All the more reason to bake it yourself and bring Broder a thank-you slice. Get more on Broder -- and her recipe -- after the jump.

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D. Gonzalez

Roti with green curry sauce at Gindi Thai

Somehow, food always seems to taste better when it's shared. And not just as it's passed around a table, but also when it travels across borders. The South Asian subcontinent has passed down its plates far and wide, providing the inspiration for new dishes through its native ingredients like pepper, ginger and cardamom, as well as incorporating itself into a wide world of meals through its unleavened flat bread, roti.

From South Africa's Cape Malay roti to the Caribbean's wrap roti, just as the use of spices spread across the globe, so has the use of roti and roti-like breads. Yet our favorite takes on roti don't wander too far from home. In L.A., some of the best roti comes from Southeast Asian restaurants like Gindi Thai, Simpang Asia and Penang Malaysian Cuisine.

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Coupe Louis Lesaffre

Swedish Team Presents

No culinary fragrance can compete with that of freshly baked bread. You can be comforted, exalted, seduced, relieved or stimulated by nutty, yeast tones gently wafting toward you. Or maybe you're just hungry. The Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, or World Baking Cup, is an event that will make every gluten-free dieter collapse at mere mention. We hope Team USA is not afflicted as such.

This year, 12 countries over three years of competitions were granted entry to the Super Bowl of Bread. The three countries that medaled in the last World Cup, in 2008 -- France (winner), Italy and Taiwan -- were joined by Peru, the United States, South Korea, Sweden, Senegal, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Costa Rica. A lengthy vetting process whittled the best professional bakers in the world to teams of three, who were first chosen for their expertise in a given category, and then survived training in competition techniques and learned to work together. Turn the page for event details, and this year's winners.

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After January 13th, you won't be able to get Angeli Caffe's fluffy, delicious bread, but perhaps this catchy 2:54 music video will help you make it on your own. Now, all you need is that industrial-size, professional-grade Blodgett oven. (Ambitious home chefs can also get a few tips on how to make pizza and tiramisu from the clip.) [Video after the jump.]

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T. Nguyen

Garlic knots at Pizzanista!

Most fast foods have their natural sidekicks: burgers have their fries. Fried chicken has its mashed potatoes. But pizza? Pizza usually flies solo, content with committing crimes against calories all by its lonesome. Every once in a while, though, it is nice to see pizza partnered up, and we personally enjoy our pizzas with warm garlic knots riding shotgun.

Like a good sidekick though, a good knot is not easy to find: they are only as good as the pizza dough that forms them. In this Food Fight, then, we match homegrown Pizzanista! against New York implant Joe's Pizza in a battle of the have-knots.

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Amy Scattergood

Challah-in-process at Stoneground.

"Don't fill up on bread," a few million parents have warned, seated around a trattoria table, a basket of steaming slices and a cup of olive oil at its center. Their children have never listened, and it's no wonder. Bread is a much better food than a band, not the perfect food, of course, but for many the most satisfying--filling, simple, fragrant when warm, a confluence of pleasing textures. At home, many of us go through a loaf a week. Unfortunately, in Los Angeles, great bread is often surprisingly hard to find. Even the "artisanal" vendors at our farmers market don't deserve to share a shelf with Acme. You know the situation is dire when you look forward to par-baked ciabatta from Trader Joe's. Below we share a handful of exceptions to the rule. And we welcome any suggestions, since you may strenuously disagree with our list. Fine. Just weigh in.

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