Crescent rolls aren’t just for your bread basket. They’re more versatile than they seem, elevating both the appearance and craveability of your appetizers, sandwiches and entrées. Roll crescent dough around pepperoni, asparagus or the filling of your choice for bite-size appetizers. Encase scrambled egg and sausage in crescent roll dough for a winning breakfast sandwich, or layer turkey, ham and your choice of cheese in egg-dipped crescent roll dough for a melty baked sandwich.  Crescent roll dough works well as a flaky, buttery crust too, so use it as a base for a savory pie on your entrée menu.

The complimentary bread-and-butter basket has become a relic from the past at many restaurants around the country, but according to recent menu trends research in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles by Flavor & the Menu, that’s just leaving space for bread to occupy a more important place on the menu. The report says some restaurants are elevating bread by focusing on creating small-batch varieties of butter – with such flavors as olive and lemon, bacon fat and malt to make the bread more special – while others are raising their bread game with homemade biscuits, cornbread and grilled focaccia. The showstopper in the trends research was a bread sharing platter at Chicago’s Tied House, where a bread course including locally made breads and a range of housemade spreads such as miso butter, crème fraiche with honeycomb, green tomato marmalade and chicken liver mousse sells for a cool $32.