Ina Garten-Inspired Garlic Bread

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

If your garlic bread has ever tasted harsh and slightly burnt at the same time, the garlic went in raw.

Chopped raw garlic hits 200°C on an exposed surface and scorches long before the bread is done. Burnt garlic is not merely strong, it is bitter, and it cannot be seasoned around. Melt the butter first, add the garlic off the direct heat, and let it sit for five minutes at just above body temperature. It turns sweet and mellow, the butter takes on all of it, and nothing is left exposed to burn.

Five minutes of infusing, and it stops being the thing people scrape off.

Cut it horizontally, not into slices

Split the loaf lengthways and you get two long flat faces that toast evenly and soak up butter across their whole surface. Cut into slices and buttered individually, the crumb steams inside the loaf and only the top browns. The horizontal cut is why restaurant garlic bread is crisp all the way through.

Foil first, then open

Ten minutes wrapped lets the butter soak in and the inside heat through; five minutes open crisps the surface. Straight into a hot oven unwrapped and the outside is done while the middle is still cold.

A microplane is the wrong tool here

Garlic grated to a paste has a much larger surface area and burns faster than garlic that is finely chopped. It also turns sharper — crushing ruptures more cells and produces more allicin. Chop it with a knife.

Storing

It is a thing to eat straight away. The butter mixture, though, keeps a week in the fridge and freezes for three months — roll it in cling film into a log and slice off what you need.