Basic Breads.

Unique breads from around the world can help firm up the foundation of your own diet's pyramid.

Looking for an easy way to steer your eating habits toward "healthy"? The USDA Food Pyramid (a guide to healthy eating) points to grains, fruits, and vegetables as good-nutrition foundations. For painless grain intake, vary your sandwiches with the panorama of new breads now available at your supermarket. Whether your favorite sandwich holds peanut butter and jelly or veggies, sprouts or salsa, a new shape or texture can transform familiar fixings into a novelty. The likely spot to find these new bread personalities is "Deli" or "Bakery."

Wrap Breads

Flat, flexible breads coiled around hot or cold food are making a splash in white tablecloth restaurants, as well as fast food locations. At home, use them to wrap leftovers, or fill them with tasty already-made tidbits from the deli. Many manufacturers suggest including greens and herbs in your wrap and tortillas often carry beans, rice, and other grains in the filling. Fold the wrap like a taco, or roll the fixings inside to make a colorful pinwheel sandwich. One advantage of the roll-up versus other sandwich breads: you'll need very little of the fillings to make it attractive, which also helps cut down on calories and fat. Choose from these "skins":

* Tortillas--

Soft flour tortillas have gone Mardi Gras, and they're now available in bright pink, green, and other colors, with taste bud-arresting flavors to match. The Tortilla Industry Association reports that tortillas are more popular today in the U.S. than all other ethnic breads, such as bagels, English muffins, and pita bread. Although some tortillas contain fat, many new varieties contain little or no fat.

* Lavash--

This soft version of an Armenian cracker bread lends itself to rolling. Some brands feature a "no oil" formulation that keeps the bread from overpowering the flavor of whatever's inside. Pastel-colored varieties feature trendy flavors like cracked wheat, roasted red peppers, and jalapenos.

* Pitas--

In the 1970s we knew these as pocket breads, but now there are pocketless pitas as well. And quick-service restaurants have made them popular. Chewy and tasty, they add a lot more substance to your favorite sandwich combinations.

Fresh Artisan and Specialty Breads

You used to have to go to boutique bakeries to get these products, but now you can find them in some supermarkets, too. We're talking not just fresh-baked bread, but made by hand or using traditional ingredients, with crusty outsides, and whole grains, herbs, or exotic ingredients inside. Great bread lends itself to simple accompaniments, and you can use smaller portions of fillings when you start with a pair of full-textured chewy slices.

Ethnic Breads

Focaccia, an Italian specialty, features lots of crust and often toppings like roasted vegetables or fresh herbs. It turns up in restaurant bread baskets, as well as in "paninis"--little sandwiches with toothsome ingredients. If you're not up to roasting your own red peppers, onions, or garlic for some homemade panini, buy small portions of such garnishes at the deli. For the bread itself, if you're fat-conscious, steer clear of brands that are oil-heavy.

Bagels

How popular are bagels? Just witness the number of shops and kiosks that have sprung up over the past year or so. The bagel family's newest additions feature flavors--sun-dried tomato, jalapeno, seven-grain, sour cream and onion, bran, and apple nut, for example. And several companies offer certified organic bagels made with sprouted wheat and no preservatives.

Packaged Specialties

It's great to have fresh bread or bagels around. But for those empty-larder days, keep a stock of shelf-stable products things that last beyond a week or so. Browse your deli for unusual packaged breads, and use them for snacks and party fare. Unusual choices for packaged breads cover a wide range, from multigrain sunflower rounds to square-shaped pumpernickel and sourdough cocktail breads to natural-ingredient products with sunflower kernels. And numerous crunch-filled crackers are available in low-fat, no-cholesterol, and no-preservatives versions.

Crisp or chewy, flavored or plain, fluffy or flat new bread varieties harbor a gold mine for easy grain consumption. So go prospecting in your supermarket today!

Ginny Marcin is a food writer living in Westmont, New Jersey.