Koreatown, the block of 32nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, is a densely packed smorgasbord of Korean food. With restaurants lined up side by side and stacked on top of each other, the competition for your stomach and your wallet is intense. You can choose from Korean cafeterias, tiny kimbap joints, Korean-Chinese restaurants, multi-level eateries with elaborate waterfalls, and on and on. And among that glorious hodgepodge, you find Korean bakeries stuffed with over-the-top sweet and savory specialties. If you want to understand what makes a living, morphing fusion cuisine, Paris Baguette is a good place to start. More

The New Amsterdam Market was a slice of bread heaven last Sunday. Fifteen of the city's best bakeries offered a dizzying array of delicious loaves, many of them created just for this event. The occasion was the market's Bread Pavilion, designed to showcase flours made from wheat grown by regional farmers. "We brought in bakers not normally in the market in celebration of local grains," said New Amsterdam founder Robert LaValva. The bakers came to support the farmers, and to compete. As Keith Cohen of Orwasher's said, "I brought my A game." More

The Ironbound district of Newark is a pancake-flat trapezoid hemmed in between the city's downtown, the Passaic River, and the highway. For almost a century, it's been home to a thriving Portuguese community, rivaled in size only by Massachusetts communities like Fall River and New Bedford. The Ironbound's main drag, Ferry Street, is lined with Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian restaurants selling platters of paella, barbecue, and the like. If you want a bite of something just as Iberian but not so gut-busting, head to Teixeira's Bakery, with two stores in the Ironbound. The line to the counter is often forty deep, but it's worth the wait. More

For the last quarter century or so, much of New York City has been a German bread desert. The only way to get a loaf of freshly made bauernbrot was to trek out to Central Queens, where neighborhoods like Ridgewood and Middle Village still cling to vestiges of German ethnic tradition. Luckily, however, tastes change, and that's where David Rothe and Volker Herrmann saw their opportunity. More

Occupying a Midwood storefront a short block from the F train station on Avenue P, Chiffon's represents almost a century of Jewish baking tradition. More

With his burly physique, shaved head, and cauliflower ears, Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria's head baker looks like the wrong kind of guy you'd want to meet down a back alley in Bordeaux. And you'd be right: as a youth in France, Kamel Saci was a professional judo champion. But in his basement bakery, a completely different side to his personality comes out. For Kamel, dough is not an opponent to be beaten into submission; it responds best to a minimum of handling, the gentler the better. The results show his techniques work. Il Buco's ovens produce some of the crustiest and most flavorsome artisan loaves in the city. More

If you want to judge the state of bread in New York, a good place to start is the bread counter at Dean & DeLuca's main store at Broadway and Prince Street. Here you find a wide selection of great loaves both haute and earthy, from the latest Manhattan artisan sensation to old school breads from the farthest reaches of the outer boroughs. More

Latvians love their dense, dark rye bread. Latvian-Americans love it so much that they have it shipped over from the old country in loaves weighing over 17 pounds. It goes fast, because it's their staff of life, a necessary accompaniment to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A number of mail order businesses have sprung up to cater to this community. Last year, Baltic Shop teamed up with the famous Laci bakery in Riga to sell their top quality breads in the United States under the Storye ("stor-eye") brand name. They're so good they might even wean Manhattanites from their baguettes. More

Flour, water, yeast, and salt. Back in 1903, a Neapolitan immigrant named Joe Parisi opened the Parisi Bakery at 198 Mott Street in Little Italy. The residents of that stretch of Mott were almost all from the Naples area, and Joe baked for them the kind of loaves that they knew from the old country. More

How do you invent a new loaf? Grandaisy Bakery is known for its white, Italian-style breads. But after they opened a store on the Upper West Side, they sensed a demand for a "health" loaf. More