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

Manicured-nail-biting pressure. Heated debates over lemon zest. Padma Lakshmi. The 46th Pillsbury Bake-Off had it all, including six local finalists vying for a $1 million grand prize and a chance to bring a third-straight title home to Philly. Inside America’s most deliciously over-the-top culinary contest.

THAT NIGHT, in yet another ballroom, we gather for the awards dinner. Padma is in a sparkly baroque minidress, looking, ironically, like she hasn’t eaten in weeks. She has some trouble reading the teleprompter, though she does manage to eke out a joke about the million-dollar prize being “a lot of Pillsbury dough.” Oh, Padma.

Out on the “blue carpet,” I ask Julie who she’s wearing. “Macy’s on sale,” she deadpans. Nadine, who has no idea who she’s wearing, looks around the packed room. “I feel a little nervous,” she says. “The excitement is building. I’m ready to find out who the winner is.” “This is all really something,” adds Lynn (in floor-length Ross Dress for Less).

After endless preliminary festivities, your winner is … Glori Spriggs, of Henderson, Nevada! There will be no Philly three-peat.

“She was on absolutely nobody’s radar,” declares Susan Nicholson, a busybody-ish food columnist from Atlanta sitting at my table, as Glori disappears under a sea of confetti. Which only goes to show: Never underestimate the power of a Loaded Potato Pinwheel. (Though how Bacon Corncakes with Warm Maple Cream walked away with nothing is just beyond me. Karen Harris of Castle Rock, Colorado, you were robbed.)

When I talk to the various members of the Philly delegation in the days after the Bake-Off, the comments are fairly uniform: I had a great time. It was magical. I’ll never forget it. I did my best. Christine, Lynn and Julie tell me they’ll definitely try again. Kristen, with one more shot left, will, too. Of her French toast fiasco, she says wryly, “That’s how competitions are—nothing ever goes the way you plan.”

Nadine and Brett, of course, are different—with three tries each under their aprons, their expiration date has arrived. Nadine tells me she’s heard rumors that Pillsbury might be changing the rules to allow people to compete more than thrice. (A General Mills spokeswoman will only declare that “official rules, including eligibility requirements, may change from contest to contest.”)

When I reach Brett at home, he confesses, “I did have the Pillsbury Blues a little bit, because this was the last opportunity to go to the big dance with the Doughboy. This is the time when in years past, my mind would be racing with recipes for the following year. Now it’s odd, because I know my time is done.

“But I left with no regrets,” he continues. “I was so happy I turned out the recipe I wanted. No shoulda, coulda, woulda.” He’s already working out a new dish for a contest run by a chocolate company, and just won another sponsored by Kellogg’s—his “Chocolate Kissed Mini Eggo S’Mores,” which frankly sound gross, took the grand prize of $5,000 and a year’s supply of frozen Eggo waffles. “I’m giving those to the food bank,” he says. “A guy can only eat so many Eggos.”

A FEW WEEKS LATER, last year’s champion, Tina Verrelli, is in her kitchen inside her tan contemporary home in Devon, which has a lavender flag on the lawn proclaiming, “Ladybugs are welcome!” She’s in a magenta top and jeans and a very starched toothpaste-white cotton apron. After you win the Bake-Off, you learn to dress the part.

Tina entered the 2010 event on a whim. While her Savory and Sweet Breakfast Biscuit Sliders didn’t even place, she attacked the following contest like a field general. Every day she trudged to the supermarket, trying to find the right alchemy of ingredients that would eventually morph into her prized Pumpkin Ravioli with Salted Caramel Whipped Cream. “So I am hiding different renditions in the freezer,” she recalls, “because I feel like my husband’s going to be like, ‘What are you doing?! You’re wasting all of this money on all of these products!’”

Turned out to be a prudent investment. Tina’s million dollars comes in a 20-year annuity; she’s just auditioned for QVC. Best yet, her name is now on millions of blue canisters of Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations. She holds one up. “I have 50 of these in my freezer downstairs,” she says sheepishly.

As she rolls out the dough to prepare her ravioli, she tells me she’s glad she won, because she had been a stay-at-home mom, “so it was nice to have something different, just for me. It was neat for my girls to see me in a different light, to see me doing something other than making dinner or doing laundry.”

Like … baking? But as I watch Tina lovingly spoon pumpkin into her ravioli squares, it strikes me that she and her Pillsbury coven have spent days, months, years creating new foods for us to eat, all with no guarantee of reward. It makes you think: In a world where people go on reality television and engage in all sorts of revolting behavior in the name of cheap fame, isn’t there something, well, sort of lovely about that?

I remember what Julie Paolella, the grandmother from South Jersey, told me the day before the Bake-Off. “I have one view on life,” she said, “and that is that you have to squeeze the juice out of it. I have no tolerance for people who are negative. You only go around once. If I seem really, really optimistic, that’s why—it’s one step at a time.”

Okay, so that’s three, maybe four clichés in a single sentiment. But it’s hard for me not to adore Julie. Or any of them, really. Because like Pillsbury dough, Julie is basic and true in a genuine way. There’s no room for the jaded behind the stoves of the Pillsbury bakers. You can dismiss this for what it so clearly is—an odd, anachronistic ritual rooted in Eisenhower housewifery. But when you really look at these contestants, they seem so much happier than most people. An illusion? Maybe. But if it is—and I’m not at all sure it is—it’s a good one. The Julies and Tinas are reminders of what all of this means away from the Bake-Off silliness: simply, that food is love.

Tina scoops a small dollop of whipped cream onto my plate, beside three perfectly browned and sugared and nutted pumpkin ravioli. She hands it to me, and I cut one ravioli in half, bring it to my lips. I am, in a word, flabbergasted. I tell her I cannot remember the last time I ate something so delicious.

She takes a bite and tilts her head a bit to the ceiling, happily chewing on her million-dollar recipe. “Yeah,” she says contentedly. “It’s pretty good.”