Garlic Bread

Garlic Bread

This is a recipe from the blog of 101 Cookbooks. Heidi Swanson does a beautiful job with her blog creating original recipes or cooking with natural but wholesome foods.

California has such a rich history with bread making, especially with the gold miners and the great sourdough bread.
A friend moved from northern California to the Midwest. She made the trip to the grocery store prepared to buy bread. She said that commercially packaged bread was pitiful and couldn't believe that was her only choice!

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Ingredients:

1 loaf artisan French bread or wide baguette

1 - 2 heads of garlic
1 - 2 sticks of unsalted butter


1 bunch of chives (optional)
zest of one lemon (optional)

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Directions:

Slice that loaf of bread right up the middle so you have two halves (he uses his serrated knife for this). Now set them on their backs, cut side up. Mince the garlic or push it through one of those crushers - either way is fine. Now add it to the butter you should be melting in a small saucepan. (This is where he got really animated). Now take a basting brush (or any brush for that matter - pastry, etc) and start slathering the garlic butter all across that bread. Really go for it, let it soak in. Make sure you get all those garlic chunks evenly distributed. You can make a garlic bread in advance and freeze it. If you are going to freeze the bread for later, this is when you do it - you don't want to bake, then freeze. Bake at a standard temperature (350 degrees) for 10 to 15 minutes to heat the bread (particularly if it is coming out of the freezer), and then brown it off for color under the broiler for a minute or two. When the bread is finished broiling let it cool for a minute or two. This is when I sprinkle with the lemon zest and chives (and to be honest, I sprinkle a bit of zest on the bread before it goes in the oven too because I like that roasted lemon flavor alongside the garlic.) Slice and serve.