On the Sugar Trail My husband and I travel like honeybees, flitting from one source of nectar to the next, ever in search of that special ice-cream shop or confectionery that may reveal - and he has no doubt of it - the character of a place. He knows the words for pastry shop and bakery in four languages. He scents sugar in unpromising alleys and around odd corners where others dare not go. And although I think of him as the sweets-obsessed one, my travel notes tell another story. Did I really eat panforte for lunch three days in a row in Siena? Separating the sticky pages of my Sicily journal, I see I subsisted almost entirely on cassata siciliana, gelo di melone, and lemon granite. I've never forgotten the panaderia in Santa Rosalia where, sugar-deprived after weeks of camping in the Baja desert, we ate a dozen cocoa-dusted conchas in almost as many minutes. To us they tasted better than the croissants we once purchased from Paris's famed Poilane. Nearer home, I've filled half a book with notes about Emporio Rulli, an Italian pasticceria (and caffe, torrefazione, gelateria, enoteca, and village gathering place) in Larkspur, 15 miles north of San Francisco. It always delights me to walk down the shady main street and come upon this elegant old-world establishment, gleaming with marble, crystal chandeliers, and mahogany fixtures. I love Carlo Marchiori's mural depicting a gondola-load of busy masked bakers, merrily mixing batters, rolling out doughs, and easing peels of round loaves into a brick oven. At Rulli, I feel more truly in Italy than I do in many Italian towns. Our routine at Rulli seldom changes. First an espresso. Rulli blends and roasts its own beans in the tradition of Italian torrefazione, in which coffee is understood to be art. This espresso blend brings out its sweetness and complexity, not the acidity. Next a torta di verdure - a puff pastry, ricotta, and vegetable tart - or one of the appealing sandwiches on display, such as the favorite, with roasted red peppers, spinach, and mozzarella on housemade focaccia, warmed in an Italian sandwich press. Then it's time for the serious stuff. We linger before the gelato and sorbetto counter, torn between hazelnut, rum-raisin, and summer's strawberry and apricot. But it's the dazzling array of sweet Italian breads, cakes, tarts, and cookies - crunchy, buttery, almond-scented, jam or fruit-filled - that I really can't resist. Pasticcerie in Italy customarily feature the sweets of their own village. But Rulli blazes a sugar trail across the north, drawing on the pastry traditions of Genoa, Montecatini-Terme, and Siena; of Milan, Venice, and Friuli. We invariably order a plate of assorted cookies, sometimes a tart filled with an Agrimontana fruit preserve, or a treat like sbrisolona, an almond crumble cake that's a specialty of Mantua. And we never leave without a few of Rulli's exquisite chocolates, made, as almost everything is, on the premises. The salesperson at the chocolate counter patiently places each of our choices on a gold paper tray, wraps it in lustrous gold foil, and seals it with a pink ribbon. The remarkable pastry chef behind Rulli is a native San Franciscan who, discovering the world artisanal Italian baking on a trip to northern Italy with his Italian grandparents, became a pastry apprentice in Turin and Milan. For nearly two years, Gary Rulli worked 14-hour days, absorbing the techniques and centuries-old recipes of mater pastry chefs whose knowledge was in danger of dying out. He flew back home from Milan with a piece of starter dough from Pasticceria Piave, the secret of the 85-year-old baker's panettone Milanese, and a determination to preserve the old baking traditions without shortcuts or compromises. That leavened panettone - rich yet light-textured, and marvelous toasted and slathered with mascarpone cheese - has been everyone's favorite since Rulli and his wife Jeannie, opened the pastry shop in 1988. I like the panettone Genovese, another handed-down recipe, even more. It is a denser cake, with an exotic orange-flower fragrance and an extravagance of raisins and candied orange and citron peels. Rulli, in fact, who returns often to Italy to work with old Italian chefs, has scores of priceless recipes in his repertory, including one for a honey-drenched panforte that explodes with fruit and nut flavors. A few are baked year-round. Others turn up in their traditional seasons - pandoro at Christmas, bomboloni (fried brioches with jam or custard centers) during Lent, colomba di Pasqua around Easter, and Milan-style zeppole (sour cherry-filled cream puffs) only on March 19 for the Feast of St. Joseph. "People plead with me to bake zeppole on other day," he says, "but I want to preserve the original customs as well as the recipes." Rulli doesn't rule out someday opening a branch in San Francisco, a city curiously lacking in artisanal pastry shops. Recently he opened a pair of pastry bars, or mini-Rullis, on the departure level of San Francisco International Airport, serving pastries and chocolates to eat on the spot or gift-wrapped to go, making the wait for a flight a sweeter proposition for everyone. Still, I don't see us giving up our Larkspur outings any time soon. It's a short trip for a genuine taste of Italy.    - Caroline Bates    Article Courtesy of Gourmet, May 2001