I can remember when Italian restaurants would serve garlic bread when you sat down at the table much like Mexican restaurants that bring chips and salsa to the table. Well, that isn’t the “norm” these days. In fact, if you want garlic bread at some restaurants today, you have to pay extra!
Maybe the more recent craze of dipping bread into olive oil and balsamic vinegar is the reason for garlic bread’s disappearance. Or the fact that people are cutting carbs and scaling back eating bread in general, or the gluten-free gang that can’t eat bread have contributed to the downfall of garlic bread. Whatever the reason, I miss it!
Back in the day, a group of us young 20-somethings used to make garlic bread a lot to accompany the pasta dinners we frequently ate. We were living paycheck to paycheck, juggling what money we had between rent, car payments, and oh yeah, food. Pasta dinners were cheap, tasty, and a whole lot of fun in the kitchen preparing them.
To make the garlic bread at that time, we would melt the butter in a saucepan and add mashed garlic until it flavored the butter. Whoever’s job it was to watch the garlic had an important role because garlic left unattended in a pan of butter can quickly turn brown and burn, thus ruining the makings of the garlic bread. If all went well, the melted garlic butter would then be brushed onto a loaf of bread and put in the oven to toast. Yum!
The modern version of making garlic bread – at least in my mind – is to just mash up minced garlic with softened butter (and whatever other herbs you want, i.e. parsley, or basil, or oregano, or rosemary, etc.) and spread it on the loaf of bread, skipping the melting step on the stove altogether. Much quicker and no one has to sit over a hot pot to make sure the garlic doesn’t overcook.
All you need is butter, garlic, bread, and in this case, I added parsley.
Mix all ingredients together until well incorporated.
Spread on the baguette.
Toasted in the oven – comes out great everytime. Well, that is, unless the person watching the bread in the oven forgets to time it or watch it. Like that’s never happened to you?
Hard to resist when the house smells like freshly baked garlic bread and dinner is a half hour away. Maybe that’s why you only see six pieces in this picture. 😉
Serves 4-6
Save RecipeIngredients
- 1 baguette
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 4 large garlic cloves, minced
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
Instructions
- Slice baguette lengthwise, set aside.
- Mix butter, garlic and parsley until all ingredients are well incorporated.
- Spread butter mixture on open faced baguette.
- Bake in 400 degree oven for 8-10 minutes.
Notes
If you have a toaster oven big enough to accommodate your baguette (or cut baguette into smaller chunks to fit on a baking tray) you can toast it for about 5 minutes and get the same results.
Nutrition
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