Baking with Julia

Martha Stewart joins Julia to bake a three-tiered wedding cake. She prepares the batter, bakes each layer in graduated diamond-shaped cake forms, and makes and chills enough vanilla-rum buttercream to ice the entire cake.

Martha Stewart completes the wedding cake by assembling the individual cakes that serve as building blocks. The "mortar" between layers is a baked crunchy almond and egg white wafer spread with apricot jam. Then she decorates with icing and candy fruit garnish.

Nancy Silverton, owner of La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles, bakes a crème fraîche brioche torte with fresh fruit poached in white wine.

Master chef Michel Richard, owner of Los Angeles' renowned Citrus restaurant, works his magic with puff pastry, making mini-pizzas and then deep-fried parmesan cheese twists. Master teacher Alice Medrich bakes vanilla hazelnut biscotti.

Lauren Groveman, New York cooking teacher and cookbook author, demonstrates how easy it is to make European ethnic specialties like rich brown pumpernickel loaves and crunchy matzos.

Johanne Killeen, chef and co-owner of Al Forno Restaurant in Providence, RI, bakes two American classics: gingerbread baby cake and Johnnycake cobblers.

Marcel Desaulniers, chef and owner of the Trellis Restaurant in historic Williamsburg, VA and author of Death by Chocolate, covers oven-roasted plum cakes with chocolate sauce and makes chocolate-mint nightcaps.

Nick Malgieri, author of several award-winning books on baking, demonstrates authentic Sicilian specialities like savory pizza rustica and fig-filled treats called "X" cookies.

Mary Bergin, of Las Vegas, NV, demonstrates how to make a vanilla chiffon cake with a twist—a full vanilla flavor and a thin, flexible shape, ideal for rolling with chocolate-laced walnut mousse.

Markus Farbinger, master teacher at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, bakes a warm poppyseed torte with poached apricots.

Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, a husband-and-wife baking team from Toronto, demonstrate two different kinds of naan, an Indian flatbread. Minnesota cookbook author Beatrice Ojakangas makes a Scandinavian flatbread called Swedish hardtack.

Gale Gand, pastry chef and owner of Chicago's Vanilla Bean Bakery, creates a "not-your-usual" lemon meringue pie for one. Florida baker David Blom makes cookies, including delicately curved tuiles and tasty ginger snaps.

Flo Braker, a San Francisco baker, author, and cooking teacher, turns out two crunchy butter galettes. One is a sweet treat with fresh berries and whipped cream, while the other features tomatoes and savory herbs. Leslie Mackie, owner of Seattle's Macrina Bakery, demonstrates a raspberry-fig crostata.

Esther McManus of Le Bus restaurant in Philadelphia makes a "real" French croissant.

Beatrice Ojakangas, a Scandinavian cookbook author from Duluth, MN, demonstrates how to make a series of real Danish pastries. She creates a flaky dough; apricot, prune, and cream fillings to go inside; and a sugar glaze for the outside. Finally, she shows how to manipulate the dough into a Danish braid.

Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford prepare pita bread, Afghan snowshoe bread, and Middle Eastern lamb and tomato breads.

Danielle Forestier prepares French breads, including baguette, boule, pain de mie, and pain de campagne.

Pastry specialist Markus Farbinger prepares "cardinal slice" and poppyseed torte.

Charlotte Akoto prepares meringue cookies, cocoa nests with caramel mousse, and tropical napoleon.

Marion Cunningham prepares buttermilk crumb muffins, buttermilk scones, popovers, Irish soda bread, and baking powder biscuits.

Pastry chef Johanna Killeen makes miniature "baby cakes" from a basic batter. Based on a traditional American pound cake recipe, the batter is made richer with the addition of creme fraiche.

Leslie Mackie, pastry chef and owner of Seattle's Macrina Bakery, bakes a classic French apple tart, a berry yogurt tart, and a blueberry nectarine tart garnished with chopped almonds.

Julia Child observes as chef David Ogonowski makes a triple chocolate truffle treat. He demonstrates how to make the dough for the chocolate tart shell and the filling, which consists of a custard flavored with bits of chopped white and dark chocolate and biscotti. Ogonowski also shows Julia how to make a garnish for the plate the dessert will be served on, including a wafer-thin chocolate cookie topped with homemade espresso parfait, creating a complex dessert of contrasting smooth and crisp textures, and warm and cool temperatures.

Joe Ortiz, a baker from Gayle's Bakery & Rosticceria in Capitola, California, shows chef Julia Child how to make crusty sourdough bread loaves in several decorative shapes. First, he makes homemade yeast, pulling bacteria wild and yeast out of the air with a mixture of flour, milk, water, and cumin. Adding more flour, he crafts a dough which he shapes into a loaf garnished with a sheaf of wheat, and mini-loaves shaped like a star and a cluster of grapes.

David Blom, pastry chef at Chef Allen's Restaurant in North Miami, shows Julia how to bake traditional Polish cakes known as babas and savarin. He uses a single recipe to create the spongy dough; sweetens it further by soaking it in a sugar syrup after baking; flavors the cakes with a variety of liqueurs, including rum, kirsch, and champagne; and garnishes with fresh fruits, whipped cream, and a homemade custard flavored with vanilla bean.

Norman Love, executive pastry chef at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, FL, shows how to make savory puffs and eclairs. The dough, flavored with cucumber and red onion juice, is one of the only pastries that is cooked twice: once in a saucepan, then again in the oven. The puffs are filled with a salmon mousse, while the eclairs are split and filled with a mascarpone cheese and vegetable medley.

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.