I don’t know if it’s the right way to do this or not, but I did find a way to accomplish this.
NOTE: I am running WordPress 4.1
Under your dashboard, hover over ‘Appearance’ and select ‘Customize’. Expand ‘Static Front Page’ and click the radio button for ‘A static page’.
Now you have a choice. If you want the Blog section to be replaced with nothing, you will have to create a blank page and select it as the Front page here. If you want to display content, you can select the page that you would like or create a page and specify it as the front page.
Hope that helps.