Give your tummy something yummy at local bakeries

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, July 12, 2000 | 9:58 a.m.

It's not necessary to rely on preservative-laced supermarket pastries or lame processed breads when you live in a city such as ours. Las Vegas has a brace of good local bakeries, where a variety of delicious breads and cakes are available fresh daily. Here are four places to try, all of them distinct from one to the other:

Great Buns

This huge facility is fronted by a retail store. All the excellent breads and pastries sold here are produced on the premises.

The business belongs to the Madonia family, which for three generations, starting in Buffalo, N.Y., has been in the bakery business. When you walk in you can't help but notice the industrial feel and the homey scent of freshly baked breads. Many local casinos -- although proprietor Augie Madonia was reluctant to name names -- buy products from here.

Sure they do. Good bagels are only 45 cents apiece, while crusty bialys are a low 35 cents. Good sourdough dinner rolls are virtually a giveaway. The price for those? An amazing 15 cents each.

Moon-shaped, chocolate- and vanilla-frosted black and white cookies are 65 cents, as are fine raspberry crumb tarts. A huge loaf of crumb coffee cake is a bargain at $2.69. For those who like the candied fruit laced with Italian- style bread pannettone, that one is $2.89.

Breads are a good buy. One pound loaves of breads such as French, rye, Sicilian and pumpernickel rye swirl are all under $1.50. One of the house specialties is a sesame-crusted three-grain sourdough, slightly higher at $1.89. Augie Madonia is also enthusiastic about one of his new products, hearth-baked hamburger rolls.

"This is a dense, chewy roll that makes any hamburger a gourmet treat," he says, "and as far as I know, no one else is doing this right now." What's more, they are also a bargain. One dozen are only $1.90. Quite a deal.

Details: 3270 E. Tropicana Ave.; 898-0311; open from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

h Franz's Patisserie

This delightful little storefront bakery belongs to Culinary Institute of America graduate Jennifer Chiongbian, a native of the Philippines. She trained at New York's Waldorf Astoria and is married to Francois Meulien, executive chef at Paris' Tres Jazz. So clearly this is a family committed to the culinary arts.

Chiongbian's creations are top notch, but she has a small production, a limited repertoire and irregular working habits. "I love to sleep," she admits. Still, she'll turn out gorgeously decorated specialty cakes with just one hour's notice. One cake sampled, a vanilla cake with a buttercream frosting and a blood orange mousse filling, was absolutely superb. Her custom-made cakes start from $18.

Just walking in anytime, though, yields sweet rewards. Her wonderful all-butter croissants are as good as any in town, $1.25 each, and she always has a fine pain au chocolat, for $1.50. She makes crunchy topped blueberry and cranberry muffins, and a wide variety of elaborately designed cookies, too.

One of her cookie specialties is a Peruvian sweet called alfajores: two shortbread cookies sandwiched around the thickly caramelized milk paste called dulce de leche, in Spanish. She also makes Key lime cookies, thumb print chocolate hazelnut cookies with rich caramel centers that she calls her chocolate caramel treasures, and many more.

Whatever you taste here is likely to be a treasure, too.

Details: 1725 E. Warm Springs Road; 897-1015; open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday.

Il Fornaio

In spite of a slightly inconvenient-to-access location, (inside New York New York hotel-casino), the panetteria, or bread shop, adjacent to the restaurant of the same name, is simply a must for anyone who enjoys real Italian baked goods.

This company is actually a chain that began American operations around 1980 in San Francisco, according to affable Managing Partner Giorgio Vanzulli. The on-premises bakery is operational 20 hours a day, producing recipes straight from the home base in Milan, Italy. More than 1,000 people per day shop here, Vanzulli says.

What they get is a wide variety of breads and pastries, many of which are unavailable elsewhere in this city. Breads range from $2.50-$3.95 and include ones such as the delicious raisin bread called uva, a terrific, crusty, savory olive bread, studded with pungent olives throughout; the slipper-shaped, crusty white bread ciabatta; and at least a half-dozen others.

One of the best Italian cookies is called fagottini lampone, a round butter cookie with a center pocket filled with raspberry jam. There are the pine nut-studded cookies called pinolate, and also baci (Italian for "kisses") which are little chocolate drop cookies. For a richer dessert, try a slice of either torta noci or torta primavera -- crusty walnut or mixed fruit cakes. At $2.95 a slice, they make a delicious accompaniment to a steamy cup of espresso.

Details: Inside New York, New York, 3790 Las Vegas Blvd S.; 650-6500; open from 7 a.m.-midnight, daily.

Montesano's Italian Deli

Steve Montesano runs a full-fledged deli, restaurant and bakery, but it is the latter, especially bread making, that one senses is his first love. This is a great place to come for traditional southern Italian-style breads and a real New York-style cheesecake, or for heavier desserts such as Boston cream pie. It couldn't be more different, really, from an Il Fornaio.

The bakery counter is adjacent to the deli counter, where you get good Italian cheeses, cold cuts and composed salads. Montesano makes these breads in an industrial facility just east of his deli. Some of them, such as the cheese-and-pepper bread or the terrific tomato basil bread, are triple proofed (allowed to rise three times), which gives the breads a finer texture.

Here you get a round, crusty hardcrust Italian bread, two full pounds worth, for $3. The tomato basil bread, almost like a thick pizza, is $2.50, and the cheese and pepper bread, topped with a layer of crunchy baked cheese, is $2.

For diehards there is the asonia bread, a sausage-stuffed bread made with rendered lard. "This bread will leave a residue of oil on paper," Montesano says, "so it isn't for dieters."

So who's dieting?

Details: 3441 W. Sahara Ave.; 876-0348; open 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday.