Pittsburgh has fared well in the preliminary round of the Pillsbury Bake-Off: Out of 100 finalists from around the country, three are from the Pittsburgh area.

Even more notable: two of Pittsburgh's three finalists are men. Only one man has won the Bake-Off since the top prize jumped to $1 million in 1996.

If you haven't kept up with the Bake-Off over the years, the desserts-only days are over. Pillsbury isn't just flour anymore. In this era of food company mergers, Pillsbury and its affiliates own more products than you'd guess.

This means that Bake-Off-finalist-wannabes can enter recipes that use refried beans, refrigerated biscuits, pizza dough, salsa, peanut butter, frozen vegetables and many other items as their official ingredients needed to meet recipe criteria.

It also means that Pillsbury has started catering to both the global cook and the modern cook. We're not talking desserts-only anymore, but we're also not talking regular old main dishes. The five recipe categories this year reflect an ethnic flair with pizza and Mexican categories, as well as appetizers, breakfast and "sweet treats."

In fact, none of Pittsburgh's finalists submitted a dessert recipe. There's Chris Batton of North Irwin, Westmoreland County, with Southwest Sloppy Joe Pizza (pizza category); Scott Hatfield of Grove City, Mercer County, with Samosa Taquitos with Apricot Chutney Sauce (appetizers category); and Sheila Suhan of Scottdale, Westmoreland County, with Creamy Bean Soup with Taquito Dippers (Mexican category).

The finalists (including a woman from York, Pa.) were selected from among tens of thousands of entrants to compete at the Bake-Off April 13 to 15 in Dallas. Pillsbury's test kitchen cooked up many of the entries.

Pillsbury pays for finalists to go to Dallas to cook their creations in a room with 100 mini-kitchens. So the finalists already have won the trip. But some will win more prizes. Category winners get $5,000. So does the winner of the "America's Favorite Recipe Award" as determined by online votes at www.bakeoff.com. And of course there's the $1 million grand prize, the most lucrative cooking contest prize in the country. All the winners are chosen by a panel of food experts who "work in jury-room secrecy," according to Pillsbury documents.

Let's meet the Pittsburghers vying for the million bucks in the Pillsbury Bake-off:

When you think of learning to cook, you usually envision doing it at your mother's knee. Not Mr. Batton -- he learned from his dad, a former Navy cook.

Now he has to compete for kitchen space with his wife, Kriss Gongaware, who's also an excellent cook, he says.

"I'm only allowed to cook when my wife is not in the kitchen -- we have this rivalry thing going," he says. "I'll always say, 'I'll let you have the kitchen.'"

But she yields it when his friends come over, knowing he likes to cook then.

Mr. Batton, 38, works at Guitar Center Monroeville and performs with Icarus Witch, a band that takes short tours mainly in the South and sometimes overseas.

His performing career is a boon for the Bake-Off: "I'm not really nervous because I'm so used to performing and being in these kinds of situations. I've played in front of 15,000 to 30,000 people at large festivals," so he can handle a few hours in a monitored mini-kitchen.

He enjoys cooking seafood, poultry and, fittingly, specialty pizzas such as the Southwest Sloppy Joe Pizza he created for the Bake-Off.

He has entered in past years, but this is the first time he's a finalist.

"I've never really felt confident" about entering. "I just did it for fun."

So when he got the call at work notifying him he was a finalist, "I was flabbergasted. I took it with a grain of salt -- I thought it was a joke or a prank." But the longer he listened to the Pillsbury representative on the line, "I realized, 'She's not pulling my leg.'"

So what would he do with a million dollars?

"Live a lot more comfortably," he says, but then poses another possibility. "Maybe use it to invest in a restaurant."

Whatever the outcome, he's thrilled to be a finalist.

"Just to get to this point is a prize in itself."

Mr. Hatfield had never entered a cooking contest in his whole life, and he didn't want to enter this one, either. He did it only at his wife's coercion.

"I thought it was silly," he explains.

Now he doesn't think so.

The 35-year-old software developer for Grove City College and his wife, Sarah, a stay-at-home mom, have two children -- Katherine, 6, and Eli, who will be 2 next month. At press time, the Hatfields were awaiting the birth of their third child any day.

The irony is that Mrs. Hatfield does most of the cooking at home. But Mr. Hatfield does like to undertake cooking "projects" on weekends -- time-consuming tasks such as baking bread. He also likes grilling and preparing ethnic foods. His mom taught him to cook when he was a kid.

When he cooks now, he's often making his Pillsbury recipe to rehearse for the big day. The Hatfields have been eating Samosa Taquitos at least once a week.

He still can hardly believe his recipe was chosen from among tens of thousands.

The day he was notified, his wife took the first call from Pillsbury, but they wouldn't tell her a thing. Even when she told him about the call, it never occurred to him that he was a finalist.

Pillsbury called two more times that evening while he was at choir practice.

When they finally reached him, he still thought maybe he was an alternate and was being "weeded out." Only when he got an official e-mail from Pillsbury's public relations department did he think it could actually be true.

He's says he's not really nervous, noting that his recipe has the advantage of being easy. But he knows he could get some extra attention because he's a man.

He recently watched a previous Bake-Off in reruns on the Food Network, noting how the three men that year got a lot of screen time. But the fact that there are eight men this year takes some of the pressure off, he says.

So what would he do with a million?

Keep working -- the $50,000 paid out over 20 years wouldn't allow him to quit altogether.

"But it would be like my wife getting a really good job."

A nurse in the stepdown unit at Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant, Mrs. Suhan, 57, has entered the Bake-Off a couple of times before. Her mother used to enter it, too.

But this is the first time either of them was named a finalist.

"I enter cooking contests all the time, but I never win," Mrs. Suhan says, laughing, though she admits she has won a couple of small ones. But the Bake-Off is the big time.

She admits to being "obsessed" with cooking, noting she's always liked trying new recipes and has cooked since she was 11 or 12.

"I cook too much. We never eat out because there are always too many things in the refrigerator."

She likes to make ethnic foods, pies, cakes, cookies, soups and more. On Sunday nights, her family gathers around her table for her big home-cooked meals. She and husband, Allan, have three grown sons -- Jamison, John and Michael -- and four grandchildren.

Her youngest son doesn't eat meat, so she created her Bake-Off recipe with him in mind, using refried beans as one of the qualifying ingredients.

So if she wins, what will she do with her winnings?

"Early retirement" is the first thing out of her mouth, but then she qualifies that statement. "At least I wouldn't work full-time anymore."

Then she ticks off all the other possibilities -- a son still in college, grandkids who will need to go to college, too.

"There are a lot of things I could do with a million dollars."