There’s a reason in Europe they eat bread with every meal. Whether it’s a buttered roll, a biscuit with jam, or a flavorful quick bread you’d eat plain, the possibilities are endless. Your can even turn your leftover rye fall bread into porridge the next morning. With recipes like danish seeded pastry twists, lasagna bread and chocolate raspberry babka, our best bread, rolls, and biscuits will have you covered no matter the season or the time of day.
Lasagna Bread (Scaccia)
Powdery fine “00” flour makes for a supremely fluffy biscuit in this simple, four-ingredient recipe. Get the recipe for Ruth Reichl’s Easy, 4-Ingredient Cream Biscuits
Rice is production assistant Nissan Haque’s go-to staple for Ramadan, but he can’t help himself with this naan, especially slathered with garlic and ghee. Best served with potato curry. Get the recipe for Indian Leavened Flatbread (Naan)
Similar to pita, but made with whole wheat flour, this Egyptian flatbread is traditionally baked in scorching-hot ovens in Cairo’s bustling markets. Home cooks can achieve similar results with a baking stone and an oven cranked to high.
Sweet, braided challah, traditionally eaten on Sabbath and holidays in Jewish households, is perfect for the dinner table—and leftovers make great french toast.
Dark and deeply flavored from a rye sourdough starter that’s made 10 days in advance, the earthy loaf is easily customizable depending on what seeds and grains you have on hand and want to add to the dough.
Savory and sweet marry perfectly in this combination of salty cheese, fragrant herbs, yeasty bread, and rich honey-butter sauce. Get the recipe for Gruyere, Rosemary, and Honey Monkey Bread »
In this recipe from Daniel Leader of Bread Alone, an airy loaf with a nice crust is produced similar to a ciabatta. It’s made with a lightly fermented traditional Italian starter, called a biga, that’s started nine hours before baking.
If you can’t find sour tapioca starch to make this Brazilian cheese bread, sweet tapioca starch will yield equally delicious results. Get the recipe for Pão de Queijo »
These rolls, from How America Eats (Scribner’s, 1960) by Clementine Paddleford, one of America’s most influential food writers, were originally made for the guests of a Kansas ranching family. Get the recipe for Butterhorn Rolls »
This recipe comes from The Progress, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski’s San Francisco restaurant where family style is the only style, and every dish comes out with the same number of portions as diners in your group. It’s a brilliant concept, and so are these roti: flaky and charred, all the best qualities of pizza dough without the heft. The Progress serves them with a tangy buttermilk ranch infused with grated truffle and sunchoke oil, but even if you can’t spring for truffles, you should still make them.
Fika means “to drink coffee” in Swedish. But it’s more than just that. It’s a moment to take a break, chat with friends, and enjoy a pastry—a tradition worth emulating. And one that’s charmingly detailed in Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall’s upcoming book Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break (Ten Speed Press, April 2015). Get a fikasugen (a fika craving) for proper Swedish coffee snacks like this cinnamon-cardamom bread. The yeasty cardamom-spiced dough is cut into a decorative pattern before baking. Get the recipe for Swedish Cinnamon-and-Cardamom Bread »
No matter how tempting the aroma coming from your kitchen, don’t open the oven to check popovers until about 5 minutes before they’re finished baking, or they will deflate.
When making these buttery little biscuits, opt for a true American cheese—fourth-generation Wisconsin cheesemaker Sid Cook, of Carr Valley Cheese, advised us to use a three-year-old extra-sharp cheddar. Get the recipe for American Cheddar Cheese Biscuits »
Flax seeds and red quinoa add texture and a nutty flavor, while honey and raisins add sweetness, to this hearty bread from master baker Eric Kayser.
Using instant yeast and a bread cloche helps simplify this rustic bread recipe from baker Priscilla Martel. If you don’t have a bread cloche, bake this bread on a pizza stone.
When garlic cloves are chopped, the sulfur compounds and an enzyme called allinase, usually held separate within the clove, come into contact with one another. The collision generates the compound allicin, which gives garlic its pungency, and pyruvic acid, which is responsible for its spicy heat. But left intact, so that its volatile compounds don’t interact, garlic offers an entirely different character; roasting the cloves whole draws out their sweetness, yielding the sumptuous confit that adorns this pretty focaccia. Cook the focaccia on a pizza stone, which will give the bottom crust a delicious crunch.
The foundation for this common Indian flatbread is the same dough that is used for chapati—atta, or durum wheat flour, mixed with water. The key difference, which creates the paratha’s signature layers, is rolling and folding the dough in a triangle. The chewy flatbread is then dry-cooked in a skillet until puffy and golden.
Like chapati, puri is made from a simple durum wheat flour dough. But this flatbread incorporates ajwain seeds, which lend a lightly herbal, floral flavor, and is deep-fried in hot oil. It’s often eaten at breakfast or as a snack. Get the recipe for Deep-Fried Indian Bread (Puri) »
This rustic whole wheat brown bread is sweetened with molasses and loaded with almonds and diverse seeds. Dense and nutty, it’s delicious smeared with sweet butter or as the basis for an open-face sandwich topped with sharp cheese, cucumber, and a juicy slice of tomato.
