Bread

Soda bread is the national bread of Ireland and is made with baking soda for leavening instead of yeast. It is traditionally baked on a hearthstone or in a Dutch oven in the embers of a fire. From beginning to end, this recipe takes no more than an hour.

When it comes to making bread, many things affect the outcome, some more obvious than others. Most important is the flour. You cannot make good bread from mediocre flour. Choose flour that is unbleached, untreated, and free of additives. All flours, and especially whole-grain flours, will eventually spoil and taste and smell rancid. Try to buy flour that’s relatively fresh; your best bet is to look for a local organic food retailer with a rapid turnover who sells in bulk. The water makes a difference, too; both its temperature and its quantity influence texture. The type of leavening agent and the length of time bread is allowed to sit and rise will both affect the outcome enormously: quickbreads made with baking soda or powder are tender and almost cakelike, while breads leavened with wild yeast and given repeated slow risings will be the chewiest and crustiest, with the most complex flavors. Weather also affects bread: humidity, heat, and cold each exert their influence. All this makes baking ever-changing and forever fascinating. There is a world of breads: quickbreads such as cornbread and Irish soda bread that are easy to put on the table on relatively short notice; wonderful flatbreads such as tortillas fresh off the griddle or whole-wheat-flour puris that puff up when they’re fried or pita bread grilled over a fire; and the classic yeasted breads of France and Italy—including my everyday favorite, levain bread. Levain bread is leavened with a natural starter of wild yeast and allowed a long, slow fermentation and rising period in canvas-lined baskets. Traditionally, before each batch is baked, some of the starter is held back to leaven the next batch. Rather than give a recipe for a levain-type bread (which is a little complicated to make at home), I offer instead a recipe for a dough that’s versatile enough to be formed and baked as a flat crusty focaccia or a traditional pizza. (Kids love to stretch out the dough and make their own pizzas.)

Every family in Mexico has its own version of this traditional soft corn bread. The classic recipe here is my favorite. Enjoy it as is, or experiment with sweet and savory versions by adding dried fruit or chopped jalapeños. Top sweeter versions with Creamed Rajas (page 188); savory versions are great with salsas. No matter how you make it, this Mexican delight is a perfect side for carne asada.

Piadini look a lot like pizzas, but because the crust is made without yeast and does not need to rise, they are much quicker and easier to make. Piadini are also cooked on the grill rather than baked in the oven, which gives them a nice, smoky flavor and crunchy crust. While you can top a piadina with anything you like, including tomato sauce and mozzarella, this sauceless combination is very typical of northern Italy, where piadini are especially popular.

Corn Bread is a quick bread—that is, risen with baking powder, not yeast—and the most useful one of all. Everyone loves it, too.

I won’t claim that this is the best bread you’ve ever eaten, but it’s the fastest yeast bread imaginable, and it’s better than anything you can buy at many supermarkets. It requires little effort, less attention, and rounds out most simple dishes into filling meals.

Traditionally, these were made as small pies and rolled up after baking (the dough is not cooked crisp but left soft like a pita); you might make twelve or even more from this recipe. Now, to make them look more familiar to visitors from other parts of the world, lahmacun are often made as large pizzas, which you can do if you prefer.

I love aggressively seasoned vegetables (see Broccoli or Cauliflower with Garlic and Lemon, Two Ways, page 452, specifically the second way, with the optional anchovies and dried chile added), and piadine are one of the best ways of justifying a meal centered around them. Piadine are griddle-cooked flatbreads from southern Italy that are sometimes folded and stuffed like calones. But it’s equally authentic, more convivial, and certainly easier to put a pile of piping hot piadine in the middle of the table surrounded by bowls of wilted kale and plates of grilled sausages or prosciutto. Have plenty of red wine on hand and let everybody help themselves.

A better-keeping bread than the standard baguette or boule, largely because it contains olive oil, and an easy one to fancify, with the addition of olives and rosemary.

Also called pide or pitta, the now-familiar flatbread of the Middle East—pocket and all—is easy to make at home. As with French or Italian Bread (page 570), you can speed up or slow down the time it takes to make these. It’s best to equip your oven with a baking (pizza) stone, but they can also be baked successfully on cookie sheets. Even better is to use a heavy skillet.

A quick street snack found in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and other parts of the Middle East. Great hot or at room temperature.

The basic European bread, which requires more patience than work. It’s eminently flexible, because at any time you can refrigerate the dough and retard the process for hours, even overnight. Many people, in fact, believe that the slower you go with bread, the better. So it’s not only acceptable but preferable to make the dough at night, leave it in a cool place to rise for 8 or 10 hours, then proceed with the recipe, taking all day—if you like—to finish it. So, this recipe is written as if you will proceed from start to finish, but you don’t have to do so.

These fresh cornmeal cakes are wonderful for breakfast or as a side dish. They can be served simply with butter or topped with scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions.

This Eastern European version of the breadstick is somewhat lighter and tastier than the common kind and equally crisp; the caraway flavor makes it more unusual. Like other breadsticks, these can be stored in an airtight container for a few days.

This is not unlike the classic American “white” bread—not the stuff sold in supermarkets today but the rich, milk-laden, soft (but not mushy) loaves of much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is no more difficult to make than French or Italian bread, but it keeps much better and is better for sandwiches. (Though it isn’t done in Portugal, you could even bake this in loaf pans.) If you have some saffron, add a pinch to the flour at the beginning for a lovely color and mysterious flavor.

Scandinavia has more food celebrations than any place I’ve ever been, with a special food for every occasion. On St. Lucia Day—twelve days before Christmas—it’s almost imperative to eat a couple of these delicious buns, but most people would happily wolf them down any other day of the year as well. Great for breakfast or as a midmorning or afternoon snack.

I thought Lent was a time of self-denial, but in Sweden it’s when these absolutely delicious buns appear, filled with almond paste and whipped cream. They certainly could be served as dessert, but in Sweden people eat them as a midmorning or midafternoon snack.

Kulcha are like doughier, softer paratha and are absolutely delicious. Combined with basmati rice, dal (page 433), and an Indian vegetable dish, like the cauliflower on page 451 or the eggplant on page 457, kulcha are a perfect centerpiece for a vegetarian meal. Chaat masala is a deliciously sour-tasting spice mix you can buy at Indian markets (it’s possible to make it yourself, but almost no one does).

Although there’s something lost in translation between the scorching heat of a tandoor—the clay oven of northern India—and the relatively tame 500°F of a home oven, you can indeed make creditable, even delicious naan at home. With their slightly sour flavor and ultrasoft texture, they’re the perfect accompaniment to dal (page 433) or any Indian meat dish.