Baking with Julia

Executive chef Craig Kominiak of Ecce Panis Bakery in New York City bakes focaccia. He shows how to test the elasticity of the dough by stretching it to see the "window," creates a sandwich with the finished product, and adds fruit and a topping of sugar to turn focaccia into a dessert or breakfast item.

Berkeley, CA teacher and chocolatier Alice Medrich creates a chocolate genoise raspberry ruffle cake, provides tips on the best way to melt and shape chocolate, and demonstrates how to cut the cake into layers. She layers the cake with crème fraiche, melted chocolate, rum syrup, and raspberries in an adjustable pan, then places the chilled, fan-shaped chocolates as a decorative topping.

Master chef Michel Richard of Citrus in Los Angeles demonstrates the making and baking of puff pastries. He creates a tourte Milanese filled with layers of spinach, red bell pepper omelet, ham, and cheese. For dessert, he makes apricot pastries designed to look like eggs sunny-side-up.

Bread machine wizard Lora Brody of West Newton, MA makes machine-kneaded buttermilk white bread. She bakes one loaf in the oven and another in the machine to compare the results, then uses some of the dough to form cloverleaf rolls and twisty rolls and breadsticks. She also creates a salsa quitza made from a dough containing refried beans and flour, topped with cream cheese, salsa, and shredded cheddar cheese.

While creating a white chocolate pattycake with chocolate tulips, chef and author Marcel Desaulniers of the Trellis in Williamsburg, VA also offers advice on selecting white chocolate (cocoa butter is the key). He makes the tulips by dipping balloons into melted dark chocolate.

Pastry chef Gale Gand of Brasserie T in Northfield, IL creates two spectacular desserts: a towering chocolate Napoleon and a "fettuccine" ice cream sandwich. The Napoleon is made of chocolate filo dough, poached pears, cranberry compote, whipped cream with ginger, and mocha granache, while the sandwich has raspberries and a fresh fruit kabob between more filo dough.

Executive pastry chef Norman Love of the Ritz Carlton in Naples, FL creates chocolate-cinnamon beignets. He makes the pastry from choux paste, uses a potsticker press to form the beignets, fills them with pastry cream and bananas, and tops them with a walnut sauce.

Bagel maven Lauren Groveman from Larchmont, NY demonstrates how to make bagels, which must be boiled before baking. She adds baking soda and sugar to help brown the bagels during baking, bakes them on top of a tile, and tosses ice cubes into the oven to create steam. Featured toppings include vegetable cream cheese, smoked salmon and scallions cream cheese, and chopped chicken livers.

Mary Bergin, head pastry chef for Spago at Las Vegas, demonstrates how to make two types of chiffon cakes, a nectarine upside-down lemon chiffon cake and a chocolate chiffon bundt cake with crème brulee. One of her many tips: The colder the eggs are, the easier they are to separate.

Steve Sullivan, owner of Acme Bakery in Berkeley, CA, joins Julia to prepare walnut bread and the bakery's renowned decorative loaves.

Nancy Silverton, owner of La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles, demonstrates how to create a basic brioche dough. This versatile dough can be used to create everything from a main course to a dessert. Silverton focuses on savory brioche pockets and pecan sticky buns.

Peter Malgieri, cookbook author and master teacher at Peter Kump's New York City Cooking School, bakes an assortment of fancy cookies. While creating a cornmeal-currant biscotti, he demonstrates the two ways to work the biscotti dough to form zaleti (diamond-shaped cookies). He also pipes out dough for amaretti, Italian almond macaroons, and creates flat, waffle-like cookies named pizelles ("little pizzas") because of their round, flat shape.

Well-known California baking teacher Flo Braker demonstrates the classic French technique for creating ladyfingers Genoise, the batter of which is used as the base for a variety of miniature decorative cakes.