You’re baking good bread at home. Or you’ve discovered a great local bakery which you enthusiastically support by buying loaf after loaf. What can you do with all that bread beyond sandwiches and lovely bread-and-butter?

Rick Easton bakes at Bread and Salt in Jersey City. He believes you can bake good bread and some of its cousins in your own home—and he provides his own recipes to help you do so. But his real focus in Bread and How to Eat it is using bread beyond the ways that most people think of right off the bat. And for that, he draws very heavily on Italian inspiration.

In some cases, he’s simply suggesting you riff on things you might already do. Instead of bread and butter alone, why not bread, butter, and bottarga? If you really crave a sandwich, try tuna with harissa, eggs and olives.

But more interesting are full-blown dishes in which good bread plays an integral part. For instance:

• Ciambotta, a Southern Italian vegetable stew
• Polpetti di pane, or bread “meatballs” seasoned with Pecorino, parsley, and garlic
• Spaghetti with bread crumbs and raisins
• Pizza di patate, a potato and bread crumb cake with a tomato, anchovy, and black olive filling

Throughout the book Easton is sharing his philosophy of bread, his passion for different types of flour, his belief that somethings are best when they are not rushed, not scaled to the largest possible size. So while Bread and How to Eat it may not be the book to begin your baking journey with, it will speak to anyone who has happily begun a long walk down that road.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.