For those of you fortunate enough to have a lot of basil in your garden right now, this is a perfect summer bread.  I make fresh bread almost every day for my family using this super easy method but once in a while it's nice to stuff the bread with a savory filling.

When I make this, I don't really use a hard and fast recipe for the pesto, but I've written one up for you.  Pesto is so easy - a big handful of fresh basil, a garlic clove, a little scoop of pine nuts and some grated cheese and olive oil.  Make it into a paste by either chopping by hand (I like my mezzaluna) or whirling it all up in your food processor.  I do like doing it by hand sometimes because the texture has such a rustic feel to it.  The food processor, or course, is much faster.  No time to make pesto?  Use a store bought version and you'll still have a very tasty bread.  

When I first posted the recipe for Italian Easter Bread three years ago, I couldn't believe the response. Every year as Easter approaches, I still get many e-mails about this recipe, so I thought I would make it again in a little different way and this also gives me the chance to update the recipe a little.

This bread is a sweet, delicious bread and so kids love it.  When I've made it for my kids I've usually topped it with colored sprinkles and eggs dyed different colors.  This year, I made golden eggs and topped the breads with Swedish Pearl Sugar from Lars, which doesn't melt when you bake the bread and looks pretty. 

You're going to love this recipe.  This stuffed focaccia is so delicious and such a crowd pleaser. It begins with my old standby focaccia recipe, the one I've made for 15 years, from Carol Field.  I make this bread so much that I don't even need the recipe anymore.  I take the dough, divide it in half and put one piece in a spring form (cheesecake) pan. I make up a stuffing of turkey sausage and plenty of onions and fill the pan and then lay the rest of the dough on top. I make mine spicy with the addition of a habanero chili, but you can certainly leave that out. You can really stuff it with anything you like - swap out the meat for lots of vegetables, like roasted peppers or mushrooms, if you want a vegetarian version. 

This is what you want to make on a cold winter day and then enjoy the rest of the week.  This cinnamon bread recipe makes two loaves, so you can enjoy one now and freeze one for later.  The dough is a pleasure to work with and roll out.   The recipe calls for a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar on the inside, but you can add some nuts or raisins also, if you like.   Try a slice toasted, with lots of butter on top.  You could even make french toast with it.  Enjoy.

We sure bake a lot of bread in this house.  I used to make focaccia bread a couple of times a week, but lately this incredibly easy artisan bread has been on our dinner table most nights.  I wanted to get out of that rut and thought I'd make these easy herbed flatbreads for a change.  I hadn't made these in ages but they are easy and fun to make and can be also used as an appetizer.

This delicious bread is sort of a cross between a cracker and a bread.  It's a great excuse to break out your pasta rollers, if you have them.  The dough is divided into small pieces and passed through pasta rollers to make a nice flat bread.  If you don't have pasta rollers, just roll them out by hand but the pasta rollers make it so much easier and faster.  These little breads don't have to be a uniform size or shape - it's kind of rustic anyway if they are not.  

This bread is one of my favorite things to serve as an appetizer with some wine, cheese and olives.  It's a pull-apart bread that is scented with cinnamon and cardamom and is slightly sweet, made with a little milk and sugar. It's really delicious.  I got the recipe several years ago out of one of my favorite all time books, "Love by the Glass" by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, the long time wine writers for the Wall Street Journal.  Their column, which ran for twelve years, was called "Tastings" and Brian and I religiously read it.  In addition to writing about wine, John and Dottie always snuck in little bits about their own life and children and if you were a long time reader, you got to feel like you knew them a little.  After I read their book, which is really a memoir of their life together, their love of wine and some favorite recipes, I really felt like I knew them.  I've read "Love by the Glass" three times over the last few years and it's more charming and funny every time I read it.  So we were stunned this past week when we read, at the bottom of their column, these words:

"This is our 579th—and last—"Tastings" column. The past 12 years—a full case!—have been a joy, not because of the wine but because we had an opportunity to meet so many of you, both in person and virtually. Thank you."

Huh?  We couldn't believe it.  No explanation, nothing.  I haven't been able to find any information on what happened or what they are going to do now.  Their Facebook page is just full of people expressing good wishes to them, but no word from them.  Hopefully, they will resurface on the web somewhere with their excellent writing.  Until then, I think I'll curl up with their book again and reread some of their fun stories.  This bread was their most requested recipe.