Baking pastries at Yesenia’s in Hillsboro. See video below.

There’s something wonderful about the aroma of bread baking. Even Franz with its Wonder-soft loaves smells good when the ovens are on. But Mexican bakeries—panaderias—are a whole other world. They use cinnamon, anise and orange in their fragrant pastries, called pan de dulce or pan dulce, filling them with guava, pineapple, coconut and vanilla cream. Savory breads are often stuffed with ham. Cookies even come in the shape of a pig. While every Mexican market in PDX carries these kind of goods, a smaller number make their own breads and pastries. Of these, two are a step above the rest: Yesenia’s and La Espiga Dorada. Don’t be shy. Just follow the grandmother with toddlers in tow, or the day laborer picking up some quick fuel, or the professional getting a box of sweets for the office. Grab a tray and some tongs and load up from the bakery case or the racks. (Hint: Items from the rack are fresher.)

Grinder

Ed Levine, perhaps the foremost authority on pizza in the United States, likes to point out that pizza is really just bread, so you can’t have good pizza without good bread. The same certainly should be the case for sandwiches, which are just meat and cheese stuffed into bread. Thus, in looking for a good sandwich in Portland, the artisan bakeries deserve special focus.

In tasting sandwiches at all of Portland’s best bakeries, none better shines a light on the importance of good bread and the way that bread can give character to a sandwich than Little T. The fillings are fine, but the breads are the star of each sandwich.

I suspect bagels made their way up the left coast to Oregon from L.A., like my parents, rather than across the continental divide. The Jewish branches of my family tree may have stopped budding when my great grandfather married a Hollywood shiksa goddess, but I can’t ever remember a time without bagels. Growing up, I associated them more with hippy culture than Jewish culture. The same people who ate bagels ate granola, wore Birkenstocks, and listened to the Grateful Dead — people like my mom.

But more puzzling than how bagels got here is the question of when a bagel became a soulless roll with a hole. Talking to New Yorkers, they just assume that the doughnut shaped Wonder Bread we call bagels are endemic to the west. I won’t argue that our average bagels were ever as good as New York’s, but I definitely remember bagels being chewier when I was a kid in the ’70s and ’80s.

The bellow of the bad bagel is a constant refrain on foodie message boards. I assumed that among the many commercial bagels for sale, many from places specializing in the Jewish bread, that at least a couple offerings would be decent. I didn’t hold out hope for any truly good bagels, the kind that would make a transplant from the lower east side weep, but I never would have guessed the truth: all bagels in Portland suck. That’s not entirely true. If you read on you’ll see there are some caveats, but for the most part it is.

DISCUSS PORTLAND BAGELS ON PORTLANDFOOD.ORG

Version 2.0 of Extramsg.com’s dining guide and tip sheet for the Portland metro area is finally finished. You can visit it here or by clicking the link at the left under Portland Food News.

The tip sheet has been greatly overhauled. Categories, such as Indian and Sushi/Japanese have been added, but also many of the entries in each category have been updated or completely changed. There’s also a new listing of “Quick Picks” by neighborhood in descending order by price.

Hopefully this tip sheet will help visitors and new residents of Portland — or those looking to expand their culinary horizons. If you would like to criticize or comment on the tip sheet, please follow the link in the dining guide itself.

Portland Dining Guide and Tip Sheet

Bakery Bar’s Citrus Poppyseed Cake

My mom loves holidays. Especially religious holidays. Even moreso if gift-giving is involved. So, despite being a single parent living day-to-day on waitressing tips, every Easter she made sure that I would wake to a brightly-colored basket overflowing with gifts, chocolate, and candy sitting in a bed of plastic grass.

The love I felt from my mom makes me want to be able to share that same feeling with others. I spent the last couple days exploring the offerings in Portland, finding foodie-level Easter sweets to give that would far exceed the Peeps and Cadbury Eggs of my youth. Although they could never exceed the love behind those simpler gifts.

Here are some especially tempting Easter treats from six of my favorite Portland shops: Bakery Bar, Di Prima Dolci, Ken’s Artisan Bakery, Pix Patisserie, Sahagun Chocolate Shop, and Saint Cupcake.

Aladdin’s Mezza Platter

Lebanese and Middle Eastern food is a great fit for Portland. It’s simple, but flavorful, vegetarian-friendly, and inexpensive.