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."

Prepared pesto is put to delicious use in this easy and elegant appetizer.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less. Deli cucumber salad and one of the new microwavable soups, such as savory lentil or spicy rice and bean, make great side dishes. End with purchased fresh fruit salad.

This corn bread is less moist than others, but it's perfectly delicious for eating, especially when spread with butter. Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 1 hr (includes cooling)

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 1 1/2 hr

Here's the traditional southern way to bake and serve corn bread: right in the skillet. Using shortening to grease the pan produces a nice, brown crust.

The secret to garlic bread that's neither too greasy nor too dry is having the correct proportion of butter to bread, so we give specific dimensions for the Italian loaf. If yours is a different size, you'll need to adjust the amount of garlic butter accordingly.

Pletzel This onion bread — whether formed into individual rolls or, as we did here, into a flat loaf (similar to Italian focaccia) — can be found in Jewish bakeries all over New York City's Lower East Side. We used nigella seeds (often called black onion seeds, although that's a misnomer), with their subtle nutty flavor, for the topping instead of the more typical poppy seeds. Active time: 1 hr Start to finish: 3 3/4 hr

Serve one of these loaves the day you make them. Wrap the other in foil and freeze up to one month so that you'll have it on hand for unexpected company.

Moist, with subtle heat from the chipotles.