It is in the Reading setup where you tell WordPress what page to use as the home page and whether it is Post or Page.  (Note: This is theme specific.  We are using the Mantra theme which does not use this setting).  Here is where you set how many blog pages to show on your blogging page, how many syndication feeds to show, whether each feed will show full text or just a summary, and lastly whether to have the search engines include your site when searching.  Following is a screenshot of the setup screen.