NOT BY BREAD ALONE : O.C.’s Best Bakeries Offer Tempting International Array

The holiday season is everyone’s favorite time to indulge at a favorite bakery, and this is a wonderful area in which to do just that.

This is also the season when bakers really like to strut their stuff, when they work overtime to decorate gingerbread houses, yule logs and the other novelties that you don’t see during the rest of the year. But even without the holiday treats, there’s no denying the impressive variety out there.

Expect everything from mom and pop storefronts to giant commercial outlets, and a few surprises to boot. Quite a few places emphasize breads, but a host of others bake up specialty fare from just about everywhere: Europe, Asia, Mexico . . . and of course the good old U.S.A. So get your orders in now while the trays are still warm and save a little work in the kitchen.

Here’s a short list of some better local bakeries, with apologies to the many good ones that I didn’t have the space to include:

You can really go to town during the holidays at Herb’s Black Forest, a classic pastry palace run by native Germans Herb and Elsbeth Mahler that’s been a local institution for almost 25 years.

Feast on things like baumstamm , the German Christmas log full of woodsy chocolate frosting and meringue mushrooms; stollen , a yeasty, sugar-topped loaf with dried fruit; pfeffernusse , the crunchy, dome-shaped spice cookies, and real gingerbread houses, elaborately decorated, which look as if they were pulled out of a book written by the Brothers Grimm.

Pastries abound from all over central Europe in this bright, busy establishment; baigly , Hungarian nut roll, poppy seed Danish, ruglach , cream cheese pockets with raspberry jam, and a host of others.

Master baker Herb Mahler has a lot of help with his creations from an international staff of bakers he has assembled from such countries as Sweden, Austria and Mexico. There are plenty of American favorites too, such as pecan, apple, mince and cherry pie, plus a host of good breads, from salty homemade pretzels to kommiss , the hard soldier bread (sold with or without caraway) that has been the mainstay of German troops for centuries.

Herb’s Black Forest, 18225 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley. Open Sunday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday till 6 p.m. (714) 964-2584.

A French baguette and a frothy cappuccino is hard to improve upon as a way to get the day off to a good start.

For proof, look at all the bicylists, power walkers and sun worshipers who stop by Pain du Monde’s engaging Balboa Island stall every morning as part of their daily ritual. They are a healthy, contented looking bunch, and you can almost hear the New Age music they are listening to bubbling away under their headphones.

Pain du Monde specializes in good, wholesome breads, ones with names like 7 grain (made with spelt, rye, wheat, oats, millet, flax and molasses) and pain de campagne (a crusty French loaf). But it is also a bakery par excellence for breakfast pastries; yeasty Scottish scones, doughy cinnamon rolls, light-textured muffins like banana nut and double bran made with trace amounts of sugar and the classic baguette, indistinguishable from one you would munch on in provincial France.

Sit on the benches outside and eat your baguette while sipping a cup of fresh roasted coffee (from a company called Diedrich’s), then take a loaf home for sandwiches. Everything is made on the premises, and often sold right from the oven. They even serve fresh juices.

Pain du Monde, 220 Marine Ave., Balboa Island. Open daily, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. (714) 675-7804. Also in the Atrium Court, Fashion Island. (714) 644-4835.

Growing up in suburban Boston, I stopped by Italian bakeries almost every afternoon on the way home from school. The smell of fresh foccaccia bread is still irresistible to me.

You can get this puffy, pan-baked bread at La Dolce Vita, a family bakery in Corona del Mar run by a young man named Vittorio Caputi. Caputi’s foccaccia comes in two varieties, tomato oregano and garlic rosemary, and he bakes a mean herbal bread as well.

Try any of his bite-sized Italian cookies; torronccini , square-shaped, nut-spice cookies; amaretti , round balls rolled in pine nuts; regina , rectangular sesame cookies, and a whole slew of others.

All of his wares taste wistfully familiar to me, and are made with as little sugar as possible. Caputi is especially proud of a biscotto he calls quersamali , a hard, chocolate covered biscuit made with Amaretto and hazelnuts. He makes cannoli to order, and can prepare Italian style wedding cakes with a few days notice. He also serves cappuccino in plastic cups, to comply with city regulations that classify him as a fast-food outlet.

La Dolce Vita, 3635 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar. Open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday till 6 p.m. Closed Sunday. (714) 675-5388.

“What, you mean you’ve never been here before?” an incredulous customer asked me as I inquired about the pastry at Grand Finale. The question seemed reasonable. Because to her, and many others who frequent this quaint, almost prissy little Tustin storefront, this is simply the top of the line when it comes to local pastry shops.

Owner Paula Rice specializes in fine pastries, thank you--beautifully decorated works of art with names like truffle cake, creme brulee and even croquembouche , a Christmastime French dessert that looks like the Pyramid of Cheops . . . in carmelized cream puffs.

All of her pastry is food for the eye, thanks to extensive training at Lenotre in Paris, considered by many to be the world’s finest pastry school. She uses no salt in making a host of rich, wonderfully conceived desserts, everything from a variety of brownies and pies to grandly layered cakes with floral displays made from shaved white chocolate and spun sugar.

You do pay for her artistry. Prices here are somewhat higher than at other local bakeries. But when compared to those in Los Angeles or elsewhere, I’d say they are a downright bargain.

Grand Finale, 13882 Newport Ave., Suite A, Tustin. (714) 669-9310. Open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Saturday till 5 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Little Saigon might not pop into mind when pastry is mentioned, but it should. The Vietnamese are crazy about baked goods, and many of them--such as Song Long’s owner, a woman named Diep Tran--have been trained extensively in France (just as Grand Finale’s Rice).

Westminster’s Song Long is a place where east meets west, a place where strange and wonderful creations abound. After you’ve sampled the flaky croissants, runny creme caramel, good cream puffs, eclairs and rum babas, you’ll want to try some of the chef’s more exotic offerings.

Banh ba lai reminds you of the French tricolor . . . except that the colors are brown, yellow and green (for chocolate, sweet bean and pandan leaf, the flavorings for each color). It’s a sticky cake made from rice flour. Or how about phuc link, little confections made from coconut milk and corn starch.

Tran also sells a variety of wonderful Vietnamese snacks. Banh bot loc is a specialty from Hue, rice noodle filled with pork and shrimp. And don’t miss banh beo, little pastry cups sprinkled with saffron yellow ground shrimp.

Song Long, 9361 Bolsa Ave., Suite 108, Westminster. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. (714) 775-3724.

I worked at Club Med in Guadeloupe during the ‘70s, where I spent a good deal of time eating good French bread and hanging out with an American co-worker who thought he was French himself. After I left the club, we lost track of each other.

His name was Rich Kaufman, and I bumped into him by accident last week. Kaufman is co-proprietor of C’est Si Bon, an authentic French bakery in Corona del Mar where you can have breakfast Club Med style, from the chocolate croissant to the steaming cup of espresso . . . providing you wear a few more clothes.

Kaufman and a few others from the club founded this bakery in 1981, and they’ve been pleasing locals ever since with their authentic French breads and pastries. They also bake a selection of buttery muffins in addition to the good baguettes, croissants and brioches, and have a complete coffee and juice bar to go along with them.

If you have a sweet tooth, there are also linzer cookies, chocolate bombe (made with white and dark chocolate mousses) and a luscious pecan tart, so rich that you won’t be able to finish even one slice. Wines and cheeses are sold there, too, a good, peasanty selection.

C’est Si Bon, 3444 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar. (714) 675-0994. Also 149 Riverside Ave., Newport Beach. (714) 645-0447. Both locations open Monday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Tuesday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Casey Wilkes of the European Pastry Shop came to America from Holland in 1949 as a master baker, and has been a fixture in downtown San Clemente for nearly 20 years.

His bakery is a real family outfit. He operates simply, with his German wife Hanna and their daughter, Lou. Hanna decorates the big wedding cakes and dips their wonderful macaroons in melted chocolate. Lou takes the orders and works the front. It’s just the cozy type of place you dream of stumbling over in a quiet place like San Clemente.

Try some of Casey’s Dutch specialties, spice cookies like the bar shaped Jan Hagel , full of ginger and cinnamon and topped with sliced almonds, or spekallas , a crunchy windmill cookie made with clove and allspice.

Breads here are first rate: good hard rolls, a heady apple cinnamon bread, kommiss-- the traditional German rye--and an excellent sourdough. He’s planning to make an almond-filled stollen in the weeks before Christmas, but you can always rely on his pumpkin, apple, cherry and mincemeat pies. They’re made by a Dutchman, but are as American as, well, you know.

European Pastry Shop, 164 Avenida del Mar, San Clemente. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday. (714) 492-5922.

Last but not least, there is the pastry of our neighbors to the south.

There are three Ruben’s Panaderia locations, but my favorite is located in a giant Mexican mall, where you will find a tamale shop, a carniceria (butcher shop) and just about anything else for the Mexican table. Besides the fact that it’s practically impossible to spend three bucks here, it’s also one of the friendliest, most cheerful places to sample pastry anywhere.

Grab a metal tray and a set of prongs, then serve yourself from the mind-numbing selection of Mexican pastries. Ruben’s uses pure vegetable oil (as opposed to high-in-cholesterol lard, which makes Mexican pastry a dicey proposition in some bakeries), and the result is a lighter, more digestible product.

My favorite item here is cuello, a deliciously flaky short pastry shaped like a doughnut and brushed with cinnamon and sugar. I also go for the unappealingly named gusano (“worm”), a horn-shaped dessert filled with pineapple jam.

It’s all here, sponge cakes, cream-filled cakes, wedding cakes, plus a variety of breads and cookies. Don’t even try to learn all the names. Most of them are imported from various regions of Mexico, and even the natives aren’t familiar with them.

Ruben’s Panaderia, 1338 W. 1st St., Suite A, Santa Ana. Open daily, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. (714) 836-7490. Also 210 W. 1st St., Santa Ana, (714) 571-0130, and 434 S. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton, (714) 992-0414.