Bread

These really do taste like pretzels, but they're shaped like regular dinner rolls. Quick-rising yeast makes them a cinch to prepare, and boiling them before baking is the secret to their superb texture.

Potatoes lend moistness, and caraway seeds and onions--two ingredients favored by German, Scandinavian and Eastern European immigrants--add flavor to these traditionally shaped rolls.

This no-knead, one-rise bread was introduced by Doris Grant in her book Your Daily Bread. This recipe is an improved version devised by Myrtle Allen, founder of the now legendary Ballymaloe House hotel and cooking school in County Cork, Ireland.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

A touch of cardamom lends subtle spice to these innovative crescent-shaped rolls.

The sautéed onion and toasted walnuts enhance this cheese-friendly bread.

Made with a mixture of cooked and raw potatoes, boxty was created as a way to use a few readily available ingredients to produce different results. It can take shape as bread, pancakes or dumplings. The recipe has been popular for so long that one traditional rhyming song goes, "Boxty on the griddle, boxty on the pan; if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man." The households that didn't have a store-bought grater improvised by using nails to punch grating holes into a box or flattened tin can. Boxty is most often made as a griddle bread, served with bacon and eggs for a special breakfast treat.

Chef Beverly Gannon accompanies the bread with this salsa, plus a garlic-ginger yogurt dipping sauce and a tomato-mint sauce.

Beer gives a yeasty flavor to this quick bread made without yeast. Slices of the bread are good toasted or sandwiched around a filling of choice.

The original cornmeal batters, as made for the settlers by the Indians, consisted of cornmeal, salt and water. These simple batters quickly evolved to include eggs, butter and milk, and were the basis of many of the most celebrated Early American breads, cakes and puddings.

A savory onion-cheese spread turns ordinary packaged biscuit dough into inspired mini appetizer "pizzas."