Breads

Rye croutons are great with potato-sausage-corn chowder, dill pickle soup, beer soup, split pea soup and more.

Since pasteurization, scalding milk is no longer necessary. Do you still scald milk for recipes?

While Serbians, Croatians, Bulgarians and Romanians prefer corn-meal or white-flour breads, other Eastern Europeans, especially Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Ukrainians and Slovaks, love rye bread. The coarser and darker, the better. With the staggering variety of ryes -- from sourdoughs to buttermilks to cracked rye meals -- one could conceivably enjoy a different rye bread every day of the week…

Every Eastern European country has a special bread recipe for Easter.

For Christians around the world, Easter is the first major holiday of spring. Everything centers around new birth. Eggs, green vegetables, and spring lamb figure prominently in the cuisine. And the proscribed foods of Lent -- butter, eggs, sugar and cream -- reappear in an infinite variety of rich Easter breads. Consider one of these recipes...

Linda Larsen, Guide to Busy Cooks, presents step-by-step instructions for measuring flour. Correct or incorrect measurement can make or break a recipe.

For a surprisingly tasty appetizer, top slices of cocktail rye or crustless pieces of rye bread with a mound of golden caramelized onions.