Note: In preparation for Young & Hungry’s baguette column next week (not this week, as previously reported here), we stopped at Marvelous Market, originally founded in 1990 by Mark Furstenberg, to see how the local institution is faring so many years after Furstenberg was essentially forced to sell his much-beloved bakeries.

The heavy wooden beams and exposed red brick at the Marvelous Market on Dupont Circle give the place the kind of warm, rustic vibe that you want from your neighborhood bakery. The spell, however, is broken the moment you open your mouth and ask one basic question: Do you bake your own breads?

Marvelous doesn’t. It gets daily deliveries from Baguette Republic, which is co-owned by Dahmane Benabane, who worked as executive chef for Marvelous Market for 15 years. The Republic plies this shop — and every other in the Marvelous chain — with all manner of product, from pastries to muffins to loaves of various shape and size. Many of them, despite their transit from Northern Virginia, are fresh and delicious.

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The best thing about getting my taxes finished this week — well, aside from getting my taxes finished this week — is that I got to visit my CPA’s offices in Gaithersburg, home of Hot Breads & Cakes, the area’s only outlet of the large Indo-French fusion chain that began more than 10 years ago in Chennai, India.

Hot Breads occupies a small, unassuming storefront in that corporate community known as Kentlands. Not The Kentlands. Just Kentlands. On the face of it — and by the name of it — Hot Breads doesn’t seem to hold out much promise beyond the traditional breads, pastries, and holiday cakes found at any local bakeries. But then you scan the bottom of the display case and see all these fusion snacks. They look like breakfast foods — croissants and puff pastries, the standard big buttery explosions of dough, stuffed or otherwise — but they’re not. These pastries come stuffed with chicken tikka and alu chili masala, the kinds of fillings most Americans would eat for breakfast only under duress.

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