Garlic Bread

This is the best garlic bread recipe ever. I’m a huge fan of Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen. However, I found that the Test Kitchen’s recipe for garlic bread was, in fact, too garlicky. Their method was to mince a few cloves of garlic and stir them into a microwaved bowl of melted butter in attempt to rupture as many cells in the garlic prior to their journey to the oven. Although this makes sense (think about how one of the first step in a lot of recipes is sauting garlic in oil until it becomes fragrant), the result is something that tastes very strongly of garlic, which is what you want from a garlic bread, but is perhaps too pungent to serve alongside another dish.

The simple solution to rupture fewer cells by omitting the step where the garlic is placed in heated butter, and instead of mincing the garlic, microplaning it. Microplaning ruptures more garlic cells than mincing does but not as many as placing the garlic into a heated bowl of butter. If you’re thinking “wow, there’s no way I will taste a difference,” then try it out yourself. Make two batches of garlic bread, one following Test Kitchen’s recipe and one following mine, and taste them side by side. I guarantee you will be able to tell which bread comes from which recipe.

Now, some words of caution before you go about making this bread. Make sure, when you slice your bread in half, they are equal in height. Otherwise, when you use a baking tray to press the surface of the bread onto the tray, the weight of the tray will not be distributed evenly across the two halves and you will end up with unevenly toasted garlic bread. Don’t over-chop your parsley or basil. If you do, all the “juice” contained in those delicate leaves will end up on your cutting board and not in your mouth. Also, the basil and parsley are technically optional, but they do add a hint of freshness. The taste of basil and parsley are subdued when the herbs are heated in the oven, so I like to sprinkle half into the compound butter and half onto the bread after it comes out of the oven.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf of freshly baked bread (I use a country style loaf from Costco), sliced in half lengthwise
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, microplaned
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) of butter, at room temperature
• handful of parsley, chopped roughly (optional)
• handful of basil, chopped roughly (optional)
• salt, to taste
• pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Remove your stick of butter from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature. In the meanwhile, heat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Combine the softened butter, microplaned garlic, half of the chopped parsley, and half of the chopped basil into a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Spread the compound butter onto the open faces of the two halves of bread. Place onto a baking tray, sliced and buttered side facing up.
4. Bake for 7 minutes.
5. Flip the two halves over so that the buttered side is in contact with the tray. Take another baking sheet and press it onto the top of the bread.
6. Bake for an additional 6 to 8 minutes.
7. Sprinkle with finishing (or flaky) salt and the rest of your chopped parsley and basil.
8. Slice the bread into smaller pieces and serve.

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