The Pillsbury Bake-Off:
Ladies (and One Male Flight Attendant)… Start Your Ovens

IN THE MATTER of the Cilantro Incident, this much should be said: The woman was simply asking a question.

First, some context: Entering the Pillsbury Bake-Off makes applying to Harvard look simple. Tens of thousands of recipes are submitted online. There is an arduous questionnaire, and a million rules: Every recipe can have only seven ingredients, one of which has to be a Pillsbury product from an approved list. You can’t be a professional chef. You can’t plagiarize an existing recipe. And if you’re lucky enough to be one of the 180 semi-finalists picked, you then have to garner enough votes on social media to leap into the Top 100 who actually get to the Bake-Off itself. Kristen was making a vacation reservation for her nephew’s birthday from her home in Paoli, “and I actually asked the Disney lady to vote for me. You get desperate.” I ask contestant Brett Youmans, a U.S. Airways flight attendant from Reading, if he’s ever used the airline-safety boarding announcement to pimp for votes. “I’m going to have to plead the Fifth on that one,” he says. “I may have asked others to do that for me.”

But the number-one rule for the Bake-Off is that you must submit your recipe to the letter; once it’s accepted, you’re not allowed to change a salt-shake when you prepare it at the finals. If you try, a phalanx of sober Pillsbury lunch moms will swoop in and shut down your station while you’re still wearing your oven mitts. So naturally I’m all ears when Julie Paolella starts telling me about the Cilantro Incident.

It’s the night before the Bake-Off, and we’re at the cocktail hour for the contestants’ dinner, for which everyone gets to dress up and feel fancy. There are three bars, and a buffet with shredded buffalo chicken casserole, and liquid cheesecake served in martini glasses. The contestants’ husbands (97 of the 100 entrants are women), who all seem to be named Joe, smell of minty aftershave and wear suits they only pull out for funerals. As they gorge, their wives swirl glasses of white wine, surreptitiously sussing out the competition.

Julie is a 60-year-old Italian grandmother from Galloway, just outside Atlantic City, and is what you’d get if you crossbred Ina Garten with CNN’s Candy Crowley. This is her first Bake-Off. She looks around furtively, leans in. “Let’s just say there was some picking,” she says of the participants’ orientation Q&A session. “Pick-pick-pick. Some of these contestants … ” She trails off. “One asked, ‘May I use a garnish of cilantro?’ And they said, ‘Well, was cilantro in your original recipe?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, then you cannot use it.’” This somehow led to a feisty debate on lemon zest, and then all hell broke loose. Julie takes a sip of wine, rolls her eyes. “It went on forever.”

Much of this is anxiety—no one wants to make it to the Big Show only to be disqualified for an errant pat of butter. Tina Verrelli, the reigning champion and the Bake-Off’s unofficial hostess, tells me she had an entire huddle convened in 2012 when she wanted a piece of tinfoil that wasn’t on her original “equipment list.” (She got it.) “They are by the book, which I really appreciate,” Tina says. “Because I have been to contests where things are shady. That’s just not right. Shady! With a capital S.”

In addition to Kristen, Nadine, Christine (Lime in the Coconut Cookie Fudge) and Julie (PB&J Breakfast Danish), the Philly delegation also includes Lynn Connors, 54, a cafeteria aide in Malvern (Whole Wheat Quinoa Pancakes). But of the locals’ offerings, it’s Brett’s Heavenly Hazelnut Torte with Mascarpone Cream that’s attracting the early betting among the Averie Sunshines. (This is Vegas, after all.) As is the case with Nadine, it’s also Brett’s last chance to win: Pillsbury only allows you to compete three times.

A chatty, slender 50-year-old with the demeanor of a fussy party planner, Brett is something of a celebrity on the cooking contest circuit—he’s already won two kitchens. (He donated one to charity.) Pillsbury has only crowned one male winner, in 1996. Brett admits he wasn’t quite prepared for all the hoopla at his debut Bake-Off, in 2010. “I got a little bit overwhelmed that first time,” he says of his ill-fated Asian-Spiced Cashew-Chicken Piadinis. (“He had oven issues that year,” Tina recalls forlornly.) In 2012, his Orange Cream Macadamia Torte turned out to be too labor-intensive. Two precepts that are unproven but nonetheless deeply accepted by most of the contestants: If your recipe requires too much time to prepare, it won’t win; and the judges suffer “taste bud fatigue,” meaning if you don’t get your dish done and handed in in the first 90 minutes, you’re probably toast. (Ba-dum-bum.) Brett’s chocolate torte requires an hour and 50 minutes, but he’s still optimistic. “This year, I made myself a promise that I am going to wander around the contest floor, stop by, and wish everybody luck,” he says. “I really haven’t gotten to enjoy the Bake-Off before this year. I am going to do that.”