Garlic Bread is one of those things that just baffle me. As a young girl, I, as every other average American, enjoyed Texas Toast and the garlic bread loaves you can buy relatively cheaply in any grocery store. Tasty, buttery, garlicky goodness that all u have to do is throw it in the oven. I thought this was genius and the best I could get short of going to a really good Italian restaurant.

Now, enter a friend from college, freshman year. A real Italian American from Jersey whose family pasta sauce put all I knew about Italian cooking to shame. This friend taught me how to cook good Italian food without cheese because of the allergy I developed at the age of 16. She also opened my eyes on the topic of garlic bread.

Since then, I always make my own. It takes me less time to whip up a great batch of garlic bread than it takes for the oven to preheat to bake it in. I don’t know why, but society had taught me the stuff we buy at the grocery was easier, a time saver. It’s not. Real garlic bread can be made and baked in 10 minutes and the flavors are so much better than that fake butter garlic crap. Real garlic. Real olive oil. No preservatives. Nomms!

Ingredients:

Bread – You can use sliced bread, rolls, or a French loaf. Just make sure you have a flat side for the garlic. I like to use French bread or sour dough. San Francisco sour dough garlic bread happens to be a serious favorite, yum.

Olive oil – Use the good stuff, not the “olive oil” you bought at giant that’s probably half some other oil.

Garlic – Minced and as little or as much as you want. I usually use 3-4 cloves, at least. You can also slice the garlic of you like the crunchy, chewiness of baked garlic.

Salt – Again, you want to use the good stuff. Not Morton’s table salt, but some real, course ground sea salt. Don’t use garlic salt.

That’s it! You can experiment and add additional spices or cheeses if you want.

Spread the garlic on your bread all over the top flat surface. If you have rolls or a loaf of French bread, you probably want to cut it in half and spread it along the flat sides.

Drizzle with olive oil. If you have thick bread, you will want to go heavy on the olive oil. Otherwise, drizzle it like you might over roasted vegetables. There is not really much science to this, it’s more of a preference thing.

Sprinkle the pieces with the salt. You can’t add too much salt to this stuff; I accidentally lost control of the salt shaker once and added 4 times what I usually do. It was fine. However, I recommend about 1/2 tsp for 4 average slices of bread. It’s really not that exact. Add more or less depending on your general salt preference.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Then, bake the bread until it turns golden-brown, about 5-10 minutes depending on the thickness.

Tada! It’s done and positively delicious. I told you that was easy. 🙂