Garlic Bread To Die For!

Oh my gosh, this garlic bread.  Seriously.

I've always been a big fan of garlic bread.  I used to buy the frozen kind you can take home and bake, until one day I looked at the ingredient list and got completely creeped out by the sheer number of (mostly unidentifiable) ingredients.

This one is simple.  Only 4 or 5 ingredients (depending on whether you like herbs in your garlic bread) and it tastes soooo much better than the stuff you buy in the store.

So here's what you'll need: garlic.  bread.  olive oil.  butter.  and rosemary if you want.




 Start with one head of garlic.  That's right.  I said head, not clove.  I can already hear some of you whining, "But I don't like that much garlic.  It's all spicy and makes my breath smell."  Well, get over it.  Trust me on this one.  In this recipe, we're roasting the garlic, which turns the garlic mellow and sweet and amazing.  And if you're worried about your garlic breath, just feed some of this to your sweetie and you'll both be happy.

 

It's one of my goals in life to eat enough garlic each day so I never notice the smell of garlic on my own or anyone else's breath.

Lop off the top of the head of garlic, so all the little cloves are open to the air.   

"Ahh, now I can breathe!"

Take out some fresh rosemary, if you're going to use it.  You can easily make this without the rosemary, and it will still be amazing garlic bread.  You could even choose a different herb.  I just happen to love rosemary more than any herb on God's green earth. (Shh, please don't tell the basil.)

You'll need a couple sprigs or so. 

Strip the leaves off the stem...

...and rough chop 'em.  (It's kind of like rough talkin' them, but not quite.)

Grab your garlic and smash it up on top of the rosemary.

It should stick to the top of the garlic.  Yum.

Put your rosemarried-up garlic head on a piece of aluminum foil.  Not all of my rosemary stuck to the garlic, so I sprinkled the rest on top.

Now, grab your olive oil man:

What?  You say you don't have an olive oil man?  How sad for you.  Well, then just grab whatever container your olive oil is in.

Drizzle it on up over the garlic.

And make a nice little pouch.

Roast the garlic at 400〫for anywhere from 45 mins to 1 hour, until it looks like the picture above.  The cloves should be very soft, but not getting crispy yet.

While the garlic is cooking, take out some (salted!) butter to get it nice and soft.  If you insist on using unsalted butter, you'll need to add salt to taste later, or your bread will not reach it's full potential.  And you don't want to be responsible for that, do you?

After your garlic is done cooking, you'll need to let it cool enough to handle it.

 Then give it a squeeze to get all those cloves out of the skin.  You might get little pieces of garlic skin in the bowl as well, so watch out and make sure to take those out.  Those aren't good eats.

Now, take a fork...

... and smash it up!

Take half a stick (1/4 cup) softened butter and throw it in.  (If you wanted to use dried herbs instead, I'd throw them in at this point.)

 

Now smash that up too!

 

Now, for the bread.  I like using the take n' bake variety, but you could easily use fully-baked bread.  But I would definitely suggest using a crusty bread, and not that soft french bread you can get in the store.  That would be sad.  Also, this is a bit smaller than your average long baguette.  If you wanted to make a large one, I would suggest doubling the filling.  It's better to have a little more than you need than not enough.

Anyway.  Slice that bread in half lengthwise.

And spread your garlicy, buttery goodness all over it.

Put it on top of some foil.

And wrap 'er up!

Bake it up like this at 400〫for 15-20 minutes.

This is what it should look like when it's done.  All that garlic has turned into carmelized sweetness and the butter has soaked into the bread, carrying with it all the deliciousness of the garlic and rosemary.  Oh my.  It's so good.

You need this in your life.  Trust me.


Hey, here's a handy printable version courtesy of Tasty Kitchen!